


True Nature

by AlexanderDietrich



Category: Adventure Time
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Asexual Character, Belligerent Sexual Tension, Blood Drinking, Cuddling & Snuggling, Evil Plans, Fate & Destiny, Fluff and Angst, Forbidden Love, Friendship, Love, M/M, Music, Nightosphere, Past Abuse, Past Relationship(s), Science Experiments, Unrequited Lust
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-05
Updated: 2015-03-30
Packaged: 2018-03-10 13:43:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 56,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3292472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexanderDietrich/pseuds/AlexanderDietrich
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary Edit:<br/>Marshall Lee and Prince Gumball had a chance at love two hundred years ago. After a messy departure, Marshall has been back in Ooo for a decade before now deciding that enough is enough and that even he deserves some happiness in life. Gumball isn't immediately sold on the idea that Marshall has grown up after a couple centuries of wandering, but admits that it has been hard not to think about the dangerous, demon-punk-rocker from the Nightosphere that left him so abruptly. </p><p>The question remains: how much can an immortal really grow, and how difficult will it be for the both of them to set aside their differences and make something good of this second chance?</p><p>This story follows the Adventure Time universe more than most fics, with some creative license taken, ie: Marshall is a little older than Marceline is in the cartoon, and the workings of the Nightosphere deal more closely with the souls of the dead. Marshall was created a vampire, not turned into one as we suspect is the case with Marcy. He does eat colour, but can also drink blood. Bubba is immortal, and is himself evolved from the pink slime seen in "Simon and Marcy."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Opposites Attract

 

 

* * *

 

 

It was probably close to midnight when the Prince finally found himself alone in his quarters. The light seemed garish, the colour nauseating after hours in his office that was, by comparison, rather tastefully muted. And while it was just another room in the same great structure that was his royal palace, this bedroom seemed like it belonged to a whole other world.

At times that thought might have been comforting, but now it was only what it appeared to be: garish and nauseating. Prince Gumball turned off the light, and sighed.

There was little ceremony in his slouched position against the wall, no decorum in the grunt that accompanied his tugging at the stiff boots he wore. He tossed them on the floor carelessly along with his socks, and scrunching his toes in the carpet as he stretched his shoulders, he let out an exhausted groan and off came that structured jacket to join the pile.

Maybe it seemed uncharacteristic of him, to be careless with his things, but they were only _things_ and as much as he might be embarrassed to admit it aloud, he didn’t need to waste the energy now to care about wrinkles and scuffed boots, not when he had a household of servants to worry about these things for him. Besides: this was his sanctuary, _his_ room, and if he wanted to act like a child here then he was allowed to take a deep breath and shed that royal skin and act like a goddamn child if he wanted to.

As if he didn’t own the whole kingdom anyway. As if he hadn’t built this place from its primordial syrup with his own two hands and all he had to show for it—other than the civilization that lived because he’d cared to structure their evolution—were these four walls and that stupid fucking four-poster bed he hadn’t even picked out.

Uncharacteristic of him maybe, to be so bitter about all of it as well. He looked up at himself in the bathroom mirror, once again in garish light, and saw a frown that he didn’t recognize; a foreign crease in his pinkish skin that by lack of contrast should have rendered all that colour surrounding him neutral, and he froze.

For a second, half a second, he was struck with fear that maybe something in him had finally expired, and that after all this time he was beginning to actually, finally, show some signs of age, but licking a thumb and stroking the crease, it melted right back into the rest of him and he sighed, both of his hands set to rest on the edge of the sink. 

No. Just like every other little scare, it was only the fatigue of the day working in him and he was left as young and as changeless as ever. Why did the thought make him so queasy, when every time he had dared the wrinkle to stay, he’d been terrified that it just might? He had seen growth, he had seen age and senescence and death; it was ugly and it was painful and even after all this time he wanted no part in it.  

Looking at himself again, he wondered as he so often did what his people thought of him. Those who had outgrown him, children who had stood at his knee and then his eye now stooped at his shoulder and he wondered if they knew, or if they thought, or if they even _cared_ that he was different and how in Ooo could they just let such a monstrous creature as himself rule them without a care to ask _why_ or _how_.

Well, he’d made them that way, hadn’t he? Sweetness was next to globliness, don’t ask questions, _be happy_.

The candy people wouldn’t ask questions, but someone might—eventually. It was easy enough to say that he was eighteen; able to rule and young enough yet that the duties of marriage weren’t yet pressing, but it was probably more accurate to guess that his development had halted closer to the age of twenty-four. He wasn’t a boy, he wasn’t a man, but he was indeed, fully grown. Maybe it was his rosy complexion that made it so hard to tell.

If there were any royal princesses in the kingdoms beyond, maybe he might have felt pressure from his advisors even at this apparently young age—Marry, just for the image. Become King. Raise a family. People _like_ that sort of thing—but the mortal kingdoms of this generation had been left to male heirs which would choose brides of their common people, and nobody had ever suggested to Prince Gumball that he take a Cupcake for a wife.

As for the kingdoms whose royal blood was immortal—like his—those sons or daughters would grow as he had grown and rule if they were meant to rule and marry if they chose to marry and their children too would grow to the age of twenty-four or so and then quietly slip away when it was time, just like they all had. That was how it worked in the Fire Kingdom, anyway: the throne was the King’s for as long as he wanted it, or until the people overthrew him.  

And the Nightosphere? Well, _those_ people had their own rules.

He looked in the mirror but couldn’t meet his own gaze.  

He washed his face, brushed his teeth and ran his fingers through his hair to comb it. He felt the tingling regeneration of his crystalized cells reforming after contact with water, and he felt a little better for it, fresher: the simplest and most painless chemical peel every night before sleep.

Trudging to the call of unconscious bliss, he ignored the black t-shirt folded on his nightstand and fell into a fitful sleep in the undershirt he’d worn all day. 

 

* * *

 

 

Having woken from dreams that refused to be remembered, Marshall Lee spent the beginning of his evening anxious and feeling in need of closure. He was sure it was one of those tortuous memory-dreams…trudging through the wasteland as a child in overalls, or seeing the Nightoshpere for the first time and realizing that he hadn’t been an orphan after all, but just a demon in training.

He groaned, squinting in the light of the open refrigerator.

Apples. Strawberries.

“Some demon,” he muttered. He picked up a single strawberry from the little basket and crushed it between his teeth, tasting the sweetness of its natural juice along with the rich, bitter colour red that came up out of it.

He leaned over the sink and spit white pulp into the drain, then flicking on the disposal he washed it down with water from the faucet and wiped his mouth and sighed.

He had no appetite for this watery-sweetness, but that little bit of colour made his lips tingle and it wasn’t a wholly unpleasant feeling.

Mummy Dearest and Queen of the Nightosphere had given him this option when all those genetically-altered nuclear-zombie candy-monster, _fucking creepy_ little things started popping up after The Last War.

He had been young then, and had been sent back up into the world with an errand to stop them from multiplying, to see if they had souls that could be sucked down into her dark little realm—which, it turned out, they could. Although anthropomorphic with minds and emotions and souls, they had no organs—no _blood_ —but came in a variety of vivacious colour on which he could feed. Mummy dearest had worked the magic and sent him up, sent him out like a dog to kill and that had been maybe six hundred years ago and he still hadn’t done good enough of a job to come home.

“Some demon indeed,” he grunted, picking up the guitar he’d left leaning against the wall next to a television that didn’t work. 

He doubted very much she’d had _strawberries_ in mind when she’d picked _red_ of the three primary colours for his appetite. She’d probably just picked it because of how well he’d taken to drinking blood.

Before the candy people, things had been different. When there had been real, _living_ people, things had been different and Marshall Lee’s mother had been proud of her only son. Proud enough to make other demons in his likeness and call him their King.  

But now he was left to a world of intelligent animals and creepy talking candy and the only human being alive was so safely under his mother’s radar that he couldn’t even entertain the idea of getting close enough for one last taste…

It was no use anyway. Crave it maybe, but he’d found that blood tasted too bitter since his reformation; bitter like the colour red. Dark shades of red were always bitter—although not always unpleasantly so. Lighter shades could be sweeter, but then he hadn’t really been in the mood for sweet in quite some time.

After only knowing the taste of blood his whole life, that sweetness—when it had been new—had been nearly irresistible. Maybe Mother had counted on that, and maybe she wasn’t only disappointed in her son for not killing every last one of those sugary little parasites of the earth they now called Ooo, but disappointed in herself for letting him keep his emotion.

 _She would have had to pick a primary colour,_ a memory of a voice sounded in his head. He sighed, and strummed the guitar. _So if she had to pick a primary for the magic to really set in for you, she would have picked magenta, not red. That’s why red tastes bitter to you._

Red. She’d always said _red._

But so what if it had been Magenta? 

Marshall set the guitar down and stood very still for a moment. He grit his teeth and took a deep breath.

What he wanted and what he should do were both the same thing when he thought about going home finally, to a world that would never force him out of the sun. If he did what he wanted and did what he should have done six hundred years ago, then he could go back there, back down where people didn’t stare at him like he was some monster, where people didn’t run away when he smiled.

What he _wanted_ was that taste again, and what he should do was do what he had been _made_ to do.

Even so, he knew he simply couldn’t. He knew that little part of him that wasn’t evil, that bit of him that existed only so he could cross the border freely into the land of the living simply wouldn’t let him do it. 

 

It was more than his old nature that made it hard to stay away from the Treehouse between the Ice Kingdom and Candy Kingdom. Fionna was like a blast from the past he thought he’d never again get to live, and looking at her; talking to her; and laughing with this normal-looking, normal-coloured _person_ was just as thrilling as being allowed close enough to smell the blood that still turned his stomach into a fist, tight with hunger.

He was, after all, still a vampire.

And being what he was, he knew it would be expected of him to use any entrance before the front door, so to her bedroom window, he slowly ascended.

It was second nature, this levitation: just a simple tension of muscles and a decision in his brain to make the movement, all just as rooted in his demon make-up as it was for any other creature to walk or swim or fly. He tensed and then relaxed, making sure he moved slowly until he was at eye-level to the window sill.

Just a quick look. He felt a little surge of excitement to see that she was there, sitting cross-legged with a blanket over her lap as she polished the hilt of one of her many swords.

“Some human,” he muttered, unable to hide his smile.

Then turning, he faced the night-time world beyond and the forest across the great expanse of meadow surrounding this place and tapped his knuckle on the glass. He liked to give the pretense at least that he wasn’t peeping in on her; she had grown so much in the past four years since they’d met and while he hadn’t experienced the pain of her outgrowing him yet, she was nearing a time when she would, and he knew this was a delicate age.

It was the goddamn cat that opened the window and invited him in. Immediately, he was welcomed with the warmth of the home, and Fionna’s exotic human scent. His knees were weak, and he was glad then that he didn’t have to stand.

“Well, would you look what the cat dragged in,” Fionna said with an obnoxious little laugh. It melted his dead heart and reminded him that he liked her company for so many other reasons than the smell of her.

“Mi’Lady,” Marshall greeted her pleasantly enough, making the motion of stepping through the open window, but never actually setting his foot on the ground.

“Do you have _any_ idea what time it is?” The cat asked.

Marshall looked down at her. He was used to talking animals by now—they were a little easier to deal with than all that talking food…and not even just food like apples and strawberries but fucking _pancakes and toast_ …toast with _butter_ on it…them?—but as her fur rustled with the elastic formation of her body to resemble something a little more human, he couldn’t help but frown and raise a little higher to the ceiling.

“Aw, it’s okay, Marshall, Cake’s just grumpy because I wouldn’t _play card_ wars with her,” Fionna winked, and set the sword down on the bed in front of her. “What’s up?”

He wanted to talk to her, to just hang out and have it be simple, but that goddamn cat was going to make this about something and he didn’t have the energy now to handle being feared by someone who really ought to be his friend by now.

“Just wondering if you ever went to that party Prince Fancy-Pants threw last weekend,” Marshall asked. It was always easier to talk about the Prince of _the things he had been sent to kill_ in this sarcastic way, even if he did tend to feel guilty for it.

“You came all the way over here to ask her that?” Cake the cat asked. She put furry paws on her wide, human-shaped hips and gave her freakishly large cat-head a shake.

Marshall shrugged, and crossed his legs under him as he floated, to match Fionna’s posture. She smiled.

“I did go,” she said, nodding. Her smile was crooked, making her round face look even rounder, with dimples in each cheek when she smiled close-lipped as she was now. Her usual hat was tossed on the ground and her hair was uncovered—a rare sight—and it was tangled in places and greasy at the roots.

“Fi _on_ na,” the Cat warned.

Cake the Cat was something of a worldly creature. Always afraid of Marshall, she’d been suspicious from the beginning of their friendship. Granted, it might have been creepier when Fionna had only been thirteen, and Marshall had seemed all the bad things that could happen to a budding young woman rolled into one, but after four years of being nothing but a friend to both of them, he thought her continued judgment was unfair.

She had once called Fionna a magnet for creepy vampire-boys. She knew where Marshall had come from, she knew who the King of the vampires was and what sorts of things made him stare at the ceiling, unable to sleep until well past noon. Cake knew that Fionna was unique, and aside from being the only human Marshall had seen in a thousand years, those words became admittedly truer with each passing year that she grew out of childhood.

Of course Marshall had always denied it. Ignoring his lingering taste for blood, he had told himself and the cat that Fionna was a beautiful girl, but that he simply wasn’t interested. Perhaps she would be a magnet for creepy vampire boys, but Marshall was her friend and he had given his word to protect her, should any creepy vampire boys come calling.

“You didn’t go,” Fionna said, sounding sweetly concerned. “Why?”

Marshall gave a shrug. “You know, whenever we go somewhere we always end up hanging out,” he said, which was true. Fionna had no patience for _balls_ , and neither did Marshall. More than once they’d left of the Candy Kingdom’s soirees for the comforts of home and videogames and records and no-strings-attached company. 

“Yeah, it was _super_ lame,” Fionna groaned. “Gumball had everyone playing charades for like three hours, and he turned down the music at ten-thirty because he didn’t want to disturb the neighbours…the whole _kingdom_ was in the palace, who was he going to disturb, the _Ice Queen_? He would not shut up about the catering too—although I think it’s weird that they eat so much sugar…like, what’s with that?”

“Right?!” Marshall laughed. He’d once confronted Prince Gumball with the same query, and it hadn’t gone well for him. “It is so messed up how much candy they eat! Like do they not see what they’re doing?”

“You should talk,” Cake said sharply. “What are you doing here in the middle of the night?”

“Cake,” Marshall sighed and turned to the cat, “I’m here because I love you. I want you. I’ve always loved you, since the night we met.”

The cat hissed and Marshall rolled his eyes as Fionna raised her voice in exasperation.

“Come _on_ , Cake, be cool…just this once.”

“I don’t like you hanging around here,” Cake growled to Marshall.

“I wouldn’t have guessed.”

“Fionna is a _nice_ girl—”

“Who kicks some serious butt,” Marshall added, giving the girl a wink. She was red in the face, and Marshall looked away quickly, turning his attention back to the cat, hoping she hadn’t seen how the colour had made him falter.

Fucking magenta. Red colour. Red blood.

Should have had more than a strawberry for breakfast.

“—and she doesn’t need no King of no vampires hanging around here and giving her a bad name. You know Prince Gumball offered to set up guards here?”

Marshall did falter this time.

“No,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know that.”

“Cake, that’s enough,” Fionna said softly. She knelt at the edge of her bed and looked up at her floating friend. “Marshall, it’s not that he doesn’t trust you—”

“He _doesn’t_ trust me.”

“It’s just that he’s paranoid…you know…”

Marshall shook his head. “Why didn’t you accept?” He looked down at her and she swept her blond hair off her forehead with a dimpled hand and frowned.

“What do you mean?”

“His offer, to have you guarded.” Marshall said obtusely. 

“Why _would_ I? He’s just being a goober.”

Marshall cracked a smile, but it was only for her. “You want him to think you’re strong…”

“And she _should,_ ” Cake cut in. “That is a _nice_ prince: looking out for her like that, actually doing something to protect her instead of floating around all of Ooo playing the guitar all night. She should want to impress a man like that, she—”

“I _am_ strong,” Fionna said, standing. Her small, naked feet pointed inward as she stepped forward, hands balled to fists. She looked up at Marshall, and up at her now giant cat friend. “I don’t need to impress anyone, I am who I am and if dudes want to offer to protect me it’s because they care about me, not because they think I’m weak little girl. I haven’t given anyone any reason to think I’m weak, but I have my faults just like everyone else. Gumball gets crazy ideas and he knows I’m not like the candy people, so he doesn’t know what my vulnerabilities are. He thinks the fact that I’m human gives me a disadvantage, so he did what he thought he could to help me and it _was_ a nice gesture but it was unnecessary.”

She was sparing Marshall the specifics. No doubt both Cake and Gumball had lectured her about spending time with him, and she didn’t want to say the words now. 

She sighed. “Marshall, I’d offer to protect you from the sun, because I care about you too,” she said. “It’s not because I think you’re weak.”

Marshall blinked, staring down at her. “Would you do the same for Gumball? Offer to protect him from his weakness?”

“Yeah, of course,” she said, relaxing her posture, “you guys are my friends. Why? Wouldn’t you?”

He laughed despite himself and sighed. “Yeah, I guess I would.”

“Marshall…” Fionna looked up at him with the sweetest pained expression. He drifted closer to the window.

“I uh,” he hesitated, “I actually came here tonight to ask why I wasn’t even invited to the party…not that I really care or anything…but, I guess now I know.”

Cake slowly began to deflate. “Aw, sugar…” she said, sorry maybe for being harsh to him.

He shook his head. These people were simple. Not being invited to a party seemed like a crime to them, and friendship was of the utmost importance. Or maybe just fighting monsters all day put real-life in a different perspective.

“Look, I’m sorry I came,” Marshall said quickly, speaking as quickly as his mind could think up his ridiculous words, “I didn’t mean to be like this. I just…I was hoping maybe he was jealous, or something. I…I was hoping maybe he would use the party to ask you out. I thought you’d say yes? You seem like a good match.”

“Gumball!” Fionna shrieked, forgetting the heavy mood. “You gotta be kidding!” She laughed as Cake’s fur bristled again. “Marshall…he’s…I mean…” she hesitated and laughed, “he’s a bit _fancy_ for me, don’t you think?”

Again, he laughed seemingly against his will. “Oh, you know what they say,” he sighed, “opposites attract.” His heart felt so heavy he was amazed he could still float. His words, although fictional until the moment he’d opened his mouth to say them, had struck an odd resonance in him that needed no divination to understand.    

He apologized again and made his way to the window.

“You should talk to him,” Fionna urged, hands on the sill as he floated just outside her room. The night air was cool and fresh on the back of his neck, drifting up the back of his shirt and clearing away that human smell. 

“Yeah,” he muttered, seeing the genuine concern in her eyes made him feel lucky to have her as a friend. He knew her well enough to know they would never have to have that awkward conversation where he’d tell her he simply was not interested. She wasn’t much interested in romance, and that much was clear.

Cake came to the window, maybe about to get in one more jab before he floated away, but he looked away as she took a breath to speak and then she fell silent, fur lying flat.

He knew Fionna was right, that he should go and talk to him. It was stupid, to have brought up the party at all, to even care at all. Gumball had thrown a thousand parties without inviting him, and it wasn’t like his parties were even entertaining.

But a tiny part of Marshall had maybe hoped—and dreaded—for the possibility that Gumball had done it on purpose this time, and that since work in the Candy Kingdom had brought Fionna past the city walls more than twice a week now, that the prince had finally been advised to at least pretend to really be a prince, and to claim his throne as King after all those years.

At least, if it had happened, Marshall could move on and stop wondering if Fionna’s human blood would taste like how he remembered, or if it would only taste bitter like red. If it actually happened, if Gumball married, Marshall would also be forced to stop thinking about that goddamn colour magenta.

 

* * *

 

 

Prince Gumball had stayed up late three nights in a row, comfortably dressed in his robe and slippers and seated in one of those hard but comfortable wingback chairs he’d let the designers of this place pick out for him. They were custom made, of course, and pink just like everything else in the room—just like him.

Fionna had been to the palace on an unexpected social call, and officially declined his offer to have her treehouse guarded. He had graciously accepted her decline, but he couldn’t help feel disappointed in what could have been a good opportunity to remind his kingdom of his political agenda while at the same time, helping out a dear friend.

Prince Gumball hated politics, and the candy people weren’t particularly political, but that didn’t mean that the other kingdoms of Ooo didn’t look at things a little more seriously. According to his advisors—not all of whom were candy people—it was in his best interest to show his strength, and to remind allies that his kingdom really did extend past the city walls, and Gumball Guardians. He had agreed that it was good for the people to see that he took an interest in even his honorary citizens, and besides that, he genuinely cared for the girl, and worried about the company she kept.

She was a human child after all, and all the seemingly boundless energy and tenacity in her warm heart wouldn’t be enough to protect her if she let her guard down.

Fionna the human had also mentioned that their mutual friend, the King of the vampires had been by to see her recently, and that according to her, he’d actually felt snubbed, having not been invited to yet another Candy Kingdom party.

It wasn’t that they weren’t friends.

Gumball considered Marshall to be his friend as well his political ally—which was something of a triumph, considering their respective interests. Marshall was a good friend to have, but recently the friendship had been more comfortably maintained at a distance. There were times when things had been less friendly, and it was then that Gumball had been particularly anxious to keep Marshall Lee close at hand.

But if Marshall was talking to Fionna the human about him, what had this vampire-King really been thinking since the night of the party? It made Prince Gumball nauseated to even wonder.

He wasn’t surprised to hear tapping at his window, and although he’d been dreading this conversation since Fionna had tipped him off, he was relieved to get it over with.

Without looking up, Gumball put the bookmark in his page and set it down on his nightstand. Taking a deep breath, he stood with his back straight and shoulders squared, and tried not to let it register just how startling that pale face in his window really was even though he’d been expecting it.

He cracked the window just wide enough for that whitish hand to slip through and pry it open, and he pressed his lips tight together when Marshall smiled that toothy smile.

“Hey Bubba,” Marshall said, lips spreading into a grin.

Prince Gumball turned away and gestured that his guest might enter, and didn’t indulge Marshall any attention when he floated close by, rising almost to the ceiling before dropping his booted feet onto the carpet.

The prince turned to close the window, but the room still felt colder with Marshall Lee in it.

“Nice jammies. _Very_ regal.”

“Shut up,” Gumball snapped. “Why are you here, Marshall?”

Marshall’s face went blank. “Well, hello to you too,” he said, voice dropping out of that crooning, taunting sort of tone and into something more serious.

The prince shook his head and crossed his arms and looked anywhere but directly at him.

“Seriously, Marshall, what are you doing here?”

“I um,” Marshall hesitated and Gumball raised his eyes in the low light, looking at him almost as if he feared that in doing so, he would be turned to stone. But when he did finally look at him, it was like some muscle deep in his gut that had been clenched for years suddenly relaxed and he sighed almost against his will, feeling suddenly quite exhausted and not at all in the mood for whatever had brought his old friend to his window tonight.

It had been a very long time since Marshall Lee had come tapping at his window.

The vampire smiled faintly and looked around the room. He lifted the strap of his guitar up over his head and came forward to lean it against a desk. His smile faded when he saw how the prince watched him.

Prince Gumball was ashamed at how awkward this was. He was ashamed to admit even to himself that he was afraid now. He licked his lips and looked away when Marshall sat on the edge of the desk.

“Marshall…”

“Look, I talked to Fionna,” he said. “I hope that’s okay.”

Prince Gumball sighed.

“I mean, I’m guessing you’ve seen her. This was…when was it? Wednesday? You do like to keep your eye on her.”

Again, he used that deep voice that was sarcasm in the guise of candor and Gumball couldn’t help but run his hand over his face, feeling those lines of fatigue etched deep into his forehead.

“It’s _fine_ , Marshall…” he managed to say, but sighed in frustration when Marshall flat-out laughed at him.

“ _Somehow_ I managed to get past the royal chaperone…”

“Hey—”

“…Just so you know, I didn’t eat her.”

“Marshall!”

“I can’t believe you offered her protection from me!” Marshall said, very seriously now.

The prince was at a loss and a little panic overcame him. He had made the offer, but he hadn’t intended to sound like such a shithead in doing it. But seeing Marshall now didn’t make him immediately want to take the offer back. The energy that he brought into the room had once been exciting, and he knew that Fionna hadn’t yet learned that his energy wasn’t any sort of normal magnetism.

Still, he felt the need to take it back. He hadn’t meant to offend Marshall—in fact, that was the last thing he wanted and not because the vampire was dangerous, but because there was still friendship there, somewhere deep down.

“Look, it wasn’t…come on, you know her,” Gumball struggled to articulate what he knew would only come out to be a half-truth. With or without the political side of his life, Prince Gumball had never been very good at lying.

“Would it really hurt to have someone watch her at night? It’s not just you—”

“ _Just_!” Marshall levitated off the desk maybe two inches, but sat in midair as if he hadn’t. Gumball had never been able to figure that one out—the levitation—and it distracted him now. He hated that Marshall saw him falter.

“I…I mean, like the _Ice Queen_? Come on, Fionna makes a living killing monsters.”

Marshall sat back down on the desk, tucking his hands under him and ran his tongue over his teeth and again, Gumball had to look away, muttering some dismissive little curse as he did.  

“…She hasn’t killed _me_ , so…”

“My _glob_ , Marshall, just…” Prince Gumball took a deep breath. “Look, the Rock Candy Mountain people have been coming to the castle saying they feel neglected by the state and I was advised to make a gesture of good will…” the words were spilling out of him faster than he could control them and Marshall Lee was grinning at him, making no effort to hide those sharp teeth.       

The prince cleared his throat. “And the Rock Candy Mountain people reject acts of charity so you can see what a position I was put in, trying to reach out to them. They were all invited to the party last week…and I offered Fionna my protection against the vampires while they were present.”

Marshall Lee looked at his feet. “Yeah?” He said, his voice gone quiet now.

“Yes, Marshall, I swear. It was my idea to make an abstract gesture in their presence, and I was advised to make Fionna an example of our strength.”

“If you can protect her, you can protect them,” Marshall nodded. “Yeah, I get it. And you didn’t invite me because it would have showed a conflict of interest.”

“Yes,” Gumball agreed earnestly, “yes, that’s exactly it. I never intended to snub you. It’s just…well, it’s not like you ever come to my parties, anyway…”

“Only because they’re super lame,” Marshall muttered, picking his painted fingernails.

“Well,” Gumball sighed, “I don’t throw parties for vampires and monster-slayers, I throw parties for candy people.”

The silence between them was awkward, and the prince felt compelled to speak.

“My advisors were adamant that something needed to be done. It seemed like a simple problem with a simple solution. These people…they really are very simple, Marshall, you know that.”

“Your advisors?” Marshall laughed weakly. “What advisors, Glob of the simpletons?”

“Don’t be crass, that’s not what I am.”

“It is though, they _worship_ you,” Marshall said with a grin.

“They don’t, Marshall, you know I put a stop to that.”

Marshall laughed again, but it was at the Prince’s expense. He stood on the floor, then opened his arms and Gumball took a cautious step back.

“Lord Bubba…”

“Marshall…”

Marshall took a knee and looked up at the Prince, bright eyes flashing in the low light with a fist clenched over his dead heart. Marshall knew that Gumball hated this sort of taunting above all else, but looking down at this smiling creature of the night, Gumball’s heart might have skipped a beat for a reason other than anger. 

“Oh Glob,” Marshall said in that low voice, “doeseth my genuflection pleaseth thee?”

Gumball sighed and turned to face the window.

“I need them,” Gumball said of his advisors. “Firstly, if I didn’t have them people would say I’m arrogant and question everything I do. With elected advisors, it makes this seem much less like a monarchy, which suits me just fine.”

Marshall hummed, leaning with his back against the wall. “Does it? You’re so modest, settling for _Prince_. Wouldn’t it be simpler if you were just King and Glob and all of that? We could call you, Pharaoh.”

Gumball flushed, heart tripping again. He hated to be reminded that Marshall was older than he was. It struck a deep chord of fear in him to imagine the millennia Marshall had passed before Gumball had formed anything of himself out of the left-over magic of civilizations passed. What was he? Sugar and magic. Marshall was something else, and this word he had just used had been ancient before Marshall had even been born.

“Well, not all of us can live up to the title of King, whether it has been bestowed upon us or pulled out of thin air.”

Marshall grunted. “What are you saying?”

Gumball shrugged. He didn’t want to get into this, not now. Marshall had pulled rank on him before, but being declared King of a handful of undead scattered across Ooo was nothing like ruling an entire race. Marshall wasn’t a King so much as he was a ringleader, and Marshall’s own birth mother was Queen still of the entire Nightosphere underworld.

“How _is_ your mother these days? Is she still gunning for the destruction of my life’s work?”

“Oh yeah, she’s evil as fuck still. It’s good to know I’m a disappointment to both her _and_ you: you’ve really done something with your immortality, unlike me,” Marshall said it lazily, inviting contempt as he pushed back from the wall and walked into the centre of the room. He picked up his guitar from where it leaned on the desk, and slinging the strap over his shoulder he strummed lightly. “You made yourself into a _God_ and I started a band in the land of the living.”

The prince of the candy people turned to face the sound of the music.

“I _need_ the advisors,” he said, becoming uncomfortable. Marshall shrugged. “They help me keep in touch with the generations. I would be…lost without them. I’d be truly ageless without a look into the lives of everyday people.”

“Ah,” Marshall turned to face him again, smiling again. He set down the guitar. “ _Now_ you sound like an immortal.”

“Shut up.”

“Is that why you love these mortal people so much and can barely even stand to look at me? Is it because you’d rather lose yourself in the present than remember the past? The past is what makes you who you are.”

Gumball frowned. “Well it’s better than floating through the centuries like some self-obsessed ghost,” he said hotly. “Before you came back into my life do you think anyone of this century even knew your name?”

“I think you’ve used that exact phrase before, Bubba: _self-obsessed ghost_.” Marshall winked at him and sighed, lifting maybe three inches off the ground to float where he had been standing. “Come on, man, I’m not dead, I’m _undead_ : there’s a difference.”

“You have yet to prove it,” Gumball said before he could stop the hateful words. Angry at himself, he focused on something else and gestured to the space between Marshall’s feet and the floor.

“That’s rude, Marshall,” he said. “Why do you have to do that? Get down, please.”

Marshall laughed and brought up his knees to a comfortable mid-air slouch. “Why, because you can’t do it?”  

Gumball’s stomach tightened. It was easiest to feel hatred when he could have felt so much else. He balled his fists but stood composed. He remembered feeling so weightless and yet so heavy and he wanted desperately to stop remembering.

“Why did you come here, if you were only going to harass me? You have your answers.” He asked.

“Maybe I came _just_ to harass you. Maybe I miss harassing you,” Marshall said, voice turning husky as he dipped his head back, floating closer to the middle of the room now as he stretched out flat. He turned to face the prince and his eyes shone bright again.

“You know, I can _smell_ the pink in you when you heat up like that. Am I really pissing you off that much? I haven’t even done anything.”

“Fuck off, Marshall,” Gumball gasped.

“Smells like strawberry…”

“Don’t you have a village to terrorize or something?”

“Filled my evil-guy quota for the month already, actually.”

“Really, did tonight help?”

Marshall laughed. “Oh, sweet Prince, you have no idea what I’m capable of.”

Defeated, Gumball’s anger was extinguished and he simply stood in the middle of the room, looking at his once dear friend with a hurt that was unmistakable, and untouchable even to the King of the vampires.

And there it was suddenly, that the self-titled Prince Gumball was something of a glob to these sweet and simple people, and Marshall Lee was heir to the underworld.

Marshall set his feet on the floor. “Hey…Bubba…I’m…”

“Leave me alone then, if you’re just going to threaten me,” Gumball said quietly. “And don’t call me that.”

“Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…you know I’m not…”

Gumball looked at him, even though he didn’t want to. He gave a little nod, and then looked away.

Not _that_ evil.

“I know,” he said quietly, “that’s why you started a band in the land of the living.”

Marshall dared to smile, but Gumball had turned away.

“But please, Marshall, just go.”

And he did.

 

* * *

 

 

It had gone just about as he’d expected, Marshall Lee’s reunion with Prince Gumball. It wasn’t that they had been estranged; they saw each other frequently enough, there had been cordial conversation with invited guests in ear shot, and besides that there were the snide comments when nobody else might hear—evidence enough of hard feelings but feelings all the same. Even through the pretense that they were merely acquaintances on opposite ends of the political spectrum, Marshall Lee and Prince Gumball hadn’t had a real conversation in what felt like a lifetime, and it had been even longer since the prince had afforded them time alone together. During their brief time alone, it had been more than clear that the candy prince had been afraid, and it had hurt more than Marshall had expected.

Close to dawn, Marshall sat, stony faced and staring at nothing in the dark of his little home.

It was his fault, he knew it was his fault. Why had he had to act that way? Why had he had to get so defensive so quickly? Why couldn’t he have just let that passive stare go just that _one time_ for the sake of diplomacy?

Why had he done it? Why had he threatened him?

It had been difficult enough just to stand there in that room after all those years, that room that smelled so much like him, and all those subtle little scents each tied to an individually painful memory. The smell of his books, the smell of the soap in the bathroom, the smell of his carpets even and the smell of the bee’s wax candles he liked—candles that the prince had always preferred in Marshall’s company, the orange light casting warmth on them both and bringing their colour somewhere back down to neutral, so that Marshall didn’t look quite so dead, and so that the pinkish colour of his own skin was neutralized just a little too. It had been difficult enough to stand there calmly in the low light, but then they’d started to argue and of course that pink, mutant whatever-he-was had flushed that deep _gorgeous_ colour…

It hadn’t even been a threat, really. Just a reminder that Gumball hadn’t needed—a reminder of what? That Marshall wasn’t really a good person? It was so arbitrary, it didn’t matter: Gumball knew what Marshall Lee was capable of, he didn’t needed to be reminded.

And it hadn’t been really so difficult to stand there in that room. It had almost been too easy, it had almost been comfortable—almost—since even though it had been _so_ long, nothing had really changed. The pain had been bitter-sweet.

Marshall sat up, moving automatically to take a shower. The hot water felt nice on his cold skin, but he barely savoured it. He had decided in a moment’s deliberation what it was he had to do. It was the only way to make these kinds of decisions, to just decide what to do in an instant and understand that it was right, no matter the doubt.

The most painful part of tonight had been Gumball’s fear of him. That wasn’t right, nobody in the Candy Kingdom should be afraid of him, least of all Prince Gumball. Marshall had been alone for a very long time, and after all he had been through and all they had been through together it was terribly unfair to stand on that plush carpet and feel like he was trespassing. No, he was not a monster, he was better than that and Prince Gumball deserved better than to be frightened into some admission of…of what?

Well, Marshall had had enough of sitting in this dark house, passing the years without purpose. What was he waiting for, anyway? He decided in that moment’s deliberation that, for better or for worse, he was going to get that boy back into his life.

 

With just enough time to go the castle again and make it back before dawn, Marshall Lee took to the sky and propelled himself as quickly as he could through the clouds. He barely saw the land below him—this earth that had been reclaimed by nature and mutant foliage and _sugar—_ and paid no attention to the gumball guardians of the Candy Kingdom that watched him float over the city walls and allowed his entry.

It was like déjà vu, being at that window again. He was absolutely exhilarated, knowing that tomorrow he’d doubt his every move but invigorated now as it carried out. He had once come to this window in such delicious secrecy so often, with his gentle tap-tap-tapping at that stained glass being in itself a hint to his intentions. Yes: gentle and secret, and not without its sense of urgency.

Just like it had been so long ago, and like it had been earlier that same night, the waiting was torture.

He hadn’t expected Gumball to be fully dressed, but he was. It made sense: the prince had many responsibilities and had risen before the sun to meet them, waking before Marshall had even gone to bed.

Memories of some morning routine flooded back, and in this excited state of mind, Marshall almost indulged in a moment of reminiscing.

“Marshall!” the rince hissed, bringing him back to the present. He looked around frantically, maybe worrying that others might see this floating shadow at the prince’s window so early in the morning, but Marshall was relieved to see that at least this time, he hadn’t answered to the window with that impenetrable mask of anger, this time the confusion had won over, won over even the fear.

“What in Ooo are you doing…?”

“Nobody saw me,” Marshall insisted, but he had no idea if anyone had seen him and he didn’t really care either. This was probably the closest he’d been to _giddy_ in a century.   

The prince laid his pink hands on the windowsill, and something like fear did register in his expression.

“Marshall, the sun!” He cried. “It’s five-thirty in the morning—”

Marshall laughed despite himself, and acting on impulse laid his hand on top of that pink one. He felt the warmth, the _life_ in it and he thrilled to it and Gumball didn’t flinch or tear his hand away or scoff like he very well could have and that too, was terribly exciting.

“What happened?” He whispered now, genuinely concerned so that Marshall’s heart might have burst, if it had ever beat. “Are you _drunk_?”

“Fuck!” Marshall laughed even as he rolled his eyes. “Glob, no, I’m not _drunk_! I miss you, Bubba and—”

“Wh—”

“No, shut up—I _miss_ you. Look, you’ve been shitty to me and I’ve been _so_ shitty to you and that sucks. That doesn’t work for me—not anymore,” Marshall said in a rush of excited breath. He should have been nervous, but a surge of confidence steeled his nerves. For the first time in years, this pinkish god of the sugar-people was looking him in the eyes and Marshall felt that he wasn’t just being _watched_ , but really and truly looked at.

His giddiness subsided, and even if it was just the rising sun calling him to sleep, he felt a calm wash over him.

This had to be right.

“Marshall…”

“I said _shut up_ ,” Marshall said softly. “I want you back in my life, Bubba.”

And without deliberating on it, Marshall made a decision in that instant and reached up and took the boy’s face in his hands and kissed him.

It was quick and sweet and the prince was shocked and Marshall Lee let out a laugh in disbelief.  

“It’s not going to be like before…” Marshall said, more sure of these words than any others he’d said tonight.

He released that soft, pink face and floated in midair, stomach feeling empty and upside down. “…But I want you back in my life.”

“Glob…Marshall…” Gumball shook his head, dazed, and as his eyes unfocused, he looked out past Marshall at the land beyond, or at nothing at all.

Marshall held onto the windowsill in both his hands as if to anchor himself, and rose up just to eye level with the prince, whose eyes snapped to his at the movement. He was very suddenly in a panic, and gripped the glass edges of the window that opened inward and met in the middle. He might have slammed them shut on his uninvited guest, but he didn’t.

“Marshall…”

“I gotta go,” Marshall said, the giddiness bubbling up again, uncontrollably. He grinned, and the boy in the window didn’t even look at his mouth—at the teeth he had to have seen—and Marshall felt like he could have floated up past the clouds.

“Marshall!”

“I gotta go,” he said, raising higher, laughing again, laughing still. “But I promise, I’ll be back!”

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few thoughts on Adventure Time and this chapter: 
> 
> So this is my first ever fan fic! I mean, not just my first one ever posted, but the first one I've ever indulged enough to write about. So yay! New things for me!
> 
> One thing I really like about this fandom is that the show, Adventure Time, seems to have morphed into something completely different in the minds of us who have these obsessive tendencies. Most of the time I see the fan art taking place in modern/present day AUs--you know where they wear clothes from H&M and sip Starbucks at the mall--but I'm trying to imagine the universe as it is in the show. It's hard to have these adult situations in mind and picture humanoid characters as basically just regular people, and then to look at say, LSP or any of the Candy People as anything other than cute little animated purple whatevers. I'm trying to imagine what these Candy People really look like, and it's frankly terrifying. I have all these questions like, where are their organs? Do they have organs? How do they reproduce--is it like a cloaca thing? How do they digest food? I feel like Marshall Lee--who in this story was young like little Marcy at a time when the Ice Queen was still human and there were still people around...maybe a little older here than is canon--would ask himself the same questions. He'd look at even the more humanoid of these creatures as being just too abstract to be taken very seriously. Imagine what Breakfast Princess must look like in real life? Her hair is made of eggwhites, she wears eggshells for shoes, and is the buttery toast a part of her body, or is it just her dress? Like, would it hurt her if you took a bite out of those pancakes? Marshall Lee would definitely test those kinds of boundaries, and he might have a hard time feeling remorse if he doesn't really regard these creatures as real people. He gets in shit from Gumball for this all the time, and I'm kind of excited to write about it. 
> 
> But, anyway, so we're just opening up here and Marshall and Gumball have something of a past, and Marshall struggles with letting it go. He feels snubbed by this stupid party thing and he knows it's stupid to feel that way, but he puts his foot down and decides that it isn't going to be like that anymore, enough is enough; he doesn't want his once dear friend to be afraid of him, he doesn't want to be that guy anymore and he's sick and fucking tired of wanting Fionna and not being able to do anything about it, and wanting Gumball and not being able to do anything about that, either. When he makes up the lie about hoping to see the two of them together, it's an obvious deflection but it hits him that if it were to happen, it might be safest for everyone and that makes him feel pretty shit. He wants his own happiness, so despite what he remembers of their past being a little rocky, he decides that he's done just hiding in his cave and makes this grand romantic gesture of going to see him one last time just as the sun comes up. 
> 
> So. We'll see how that works out.
> 
> Also, hey! I like comments, so hit me up.


	2. Rehash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the two cuties go off to their respective hiding places and agonize over the implications of all that Marshall has set in motion with his impulsive little peck. 
> 
> A lot of rambling, but it's a good set up.

* * *

 

It was everything Prince Gumball could do to go about his duties after Marshall Lee’s second visit within eight hours. The sun had risen far sooner than the time it would take for the vampire to get back to his shadowy home in the caves, but the prince wasn’t worried about the sunburn he would surely sustain from his risky visit; Marshall was a resourceful creature and always had been, he would be just fine.

Barely even thinking of the sun at all—except to constantly remind himself that Marshall would be forced to sleep and therefore would _not_ be floating through the palace doors every time he turned his back—Bubba Gumball simply sat at his desk, or at the conference table, or stood with his back straight and shoulders squared, staring at the floor and hearing nothing and feeling only the phantom press of those cold lips on his.

It had been a long time.

It had been a very long time.

Prince Gumball might have forgotten it. He had expected the vampire to have forgotten most or all of what had happened between them—when? A hundred years ago, two? Glob, he had no idea.

It had been a very, _very_ long time.

But then there had been those resounding words, _It’s not going to be like before…_

What did that _mean_? Why do that, why reach out a moment before the lethal dawn? Why kiss him? Why make that gesture and then say that it wasn’t going to be like before— _Glob_ , what _part_ of how it had been before did he not want it to be like?

Reckless. The boy was reckless and he was cryptic and he was mean, doing this on a whim with no explanation and the promise of return that could have been to anyone else, some kind of threat.

Vampire boy at his window: Gumball wanted to dismiss the notion immediately as just too dangerous or absurd, but then his mind would wander to half memories and he would wonder, thinking, who knew that murderous-Nightosphere-demon punk-rockers could beckon so gently with just an over-grown and black-painted fingernail on polished glass? His heart beat fast to remember the little sound—unmistakable and so unexpected that close to dawn.

Gumball passed the day in what must have seemed like a stupor and knowing it, being unable to rouse himself and give his undivided attention to his work and his people, hoped he appeared simply bored, if not mentally absorbed in some side project or experiment or academic research—something, but…

But Marshall.

Glob, it had been a long _fucking_ time.

Maddened by the implications, his thoughts were like the tide; rushing in at a startling pace and crashing against the walls of his mind, only recede to the point where he nearly heard those around him speaking. Then, finding himself terribly lost in their seemingly idle chit-chat, he would drift off to deeper and more dangerous waters and float away again completely.  

Why had he come back? Sure, he’d been to the palace plenty of times since that time, but why _come back_? Things hadn’t ended amicably, that much was certain. It had taken a century—longer!—for Marshall to even return to their common realm, and who knew where he had been or what he had seen in that century or two on the other side of the world? He’d been back in that old cave house, forced to this strained proximity, for less than ten years and since his return both of them had pretended to be no more than estranged friends.

Marshall Lee, the King of the vampires, had seen a billion faces; no doubt kissed a thousand pairs of lips and there he had been, at Gumball’s window, braving the sun to demand again to kiss his own.

But nothing about it had been demanding. The prince hit some reservoir of buried memory and cautiously—bracing himself for the flood—scratched at the surface without any intention to dig too deep, just deep enough to maybe glimpse that bit of something he had detected.

In a hazy glimpse of some lifetime ago, he remembered a Marshall Lee two hundred years younger and yet still in the same ruthlessly enticing form, who had never really been _demanding_ ; in fact, not very demanding at all—not for a murderous-Nightosphere-demon punk-rocker.

Confusion quieted him. He tasted danger in the cold memory of vampire lips, and knew danger when he saw that face in his mind. Even if he’d spent two hundred years being just a little afraid of Marshall, his first instinct last night had been to thrill to such a simple gesture of affection from a demon, that the uncommon nature of such a sweet little thing from all that Marshall Lee had the potential to be in Prince Gumball’s mind was all the more exciting for it’s simplicity. But the fact was that the version real version of Marshall that was buried deep in Bubba Gumball’s memory was frankly, far less exciting than all that. This sweetness, for him, was not so absurd at all…but maybe the brashness of a kiss in the light of dawn could have been.

Perhaps the reaction to be thrilled as he had been was indeed warranted, but the cause of his symptom was far from what he’d initially thought.   

That wave of uncertainty went out with the tide. He didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to make that assumption. He had blocked out memories of that time for so long that it almost seemed like a dream to think that they had ever been close.

Gumball had known Marshall Lee—or known of him—almost since the beginning of his life, and until they’d been close, they’d been cautiously distant. It had been clear from the very beginning that there was a curiosity between them—the irrepressible magnetized attraction of one so utterly different—and Gumball in his early days had known that to call that floating, black-haired boy with pointed ears and pointed teeth a _demon_ was more an insult to its truth than it was a kind of slur.

To say that they were different had always been an understatement, and it was for that reason that more than a curious glance across the room had seemed so wildly inappropriate for all that time. He remembered the first time he had verbally acknowledged Marshall Lee to his advisors, to his subjects, maybe a couple centuries after their introduction. He remembered the first time Marshall had entered _invited_ through the Candy Kingdom gates and the things his people had said. He had felt some kind of thrill then too; to see the contrast and acknowledge it and even allow himself, with the privilege of a monarch, to touch that undead skin.

Gumball had spent his life devoted to scientific research, to building this kingdom, to helping the candy people rise into intelligent being while all sorts of new species and civilizations formed slowly around them. He was standing there as these thoughts passed through him, barely listening to these creatures in question speak, but they _were_ speaking to him and he _did_ love them. It never really stopped being abstract for him either—where he was and what he did what all of this _royalty_ shit meant, if anything. He remembered those years and years and years of loneliness and hard work.

Was Marshall drawn to that? Did the idea get stuck in his heart like a moth, and flutter against it’s walls in the most uncomfortable, yet endearing way like how thoughts of the vampire floating around Ooo and doing whatever he wanted inspired both awe and horror in Gumball? Did Marshall look at the Prince’s structured life and at all he had made and feel drawn to someone who created instead of destroyed? Prince Gumball was a self-made man, and without the drive he possessed, he and all the Candy Kingdom might still be unevolved, semi-sentient syrup. And Marshall Lee was and always had been a hedonistic parasite of all he had created.

There was a pang of shame at the last thought. The words might have been true had they been only words, but it was self-adulation and cruel derision in one and Gumball felt suddenly hideously ashamed of all of it. He wanted to take off that little pointed crown, the one he had made and given to himself, but knew he couldn’t.

Marshall had his redeeming qualities: he could be sweet. There was that. And he was creative—not creative in any ability to solve real-world problems, but he _was_ creative. He wrote his songs. Gumball could never do that, write a song. He had confidence, maybe? He had that going for him. And he did have a certain way with people: not necessarily manipulative, but maybe it was the demon in him that was just naturally alluring…

If Prince Gumball really _was_ going to compare, he had to ask himself what it was that Marshall actually did with his time—banished or not, he was still immortal. He certainly hadn’t created a civilization, he hadn’t shaped a whole system of government, he hadn’t spawned a hundred different subspecies of what the vampire had always called _anthro-food_. What _did_ Marshall do? He played guitar. He looked down his nose at these living things and said that they weren’t _human_ enough to enter personhood—and since when had there ever been such an abundance of human beings as to base the requirements of personhood off that species alone? Ah, he’d heard it all before, all the arguments. He remembered just a little bit more of what it was like to be intimately acquainted with Marshall Lee.

Marshall lived in the past. Maybe that was why he hadn’t been able to stay away.

He knew why the boy haunted Ooo, and for all the times Gumball had called him a ghost for his lack of purpose, he might have been wiser to thank the Prince of the Nightosphere for ignoring the purpose he’d been given. Marshall Lee was a horrible demon—the destruction he caused was minimal, his annoyances petty and Gumball should have been thankful for Marshall’s listlessness: being a bad demon had made him almost something of a good person. Almost.

Of course he’d known it all along, but to think it so articulately to himself then that Marshall was banished from the Nightosphere because of his unwillingness to kill him was a bit of a shock. At times he’d seethed, ranting and accused the vampire of making plans of it. He heard his own words and shuddered to himself, quietly mortified: _Any excuse and you’d do it_ …

And at times he’d been dismissive, thinking that nobody could ever want to go back to the Nightosphere anyway, that even Marshall’s own mother was a tyrant—but even if it were true, it was home to Marshall, and must have offered its own comforts, even if from inside his castle walls, Prince Gumball couldn’t think of what a single one might be: maybe vampires found fire and brimstone comforting, who was he to say?

And who was he to accept even the simplest kiss from such a creature? Who was he to accept any affection at all not only from someone who had made that sacrifice, but from someone who was so inclined to go for all or nothing in a situation where it was banishment in love or—

He was getting too far ahead of himself.

It had been a kiss.

It could have meant anything to such an ancient boy. _I want you back in my life_. It had been painfully vague. But it was true, wasn’t it? All or nothing. He had gone so far away for so very long, far enough that all the world but Bubba Gumball had just assumed that he was dead or gone back to that dark place. And now that he was back to the common realm, he hadn’t even lasted ten years before asking for another try.

Maybe he wasn’t asking permission, but it made the Prince feel a little stronger, a little more secure to have these ideas in mind. Maybe he did remember a little of how it had been, maybe he did know what was truly at stake to attempt to give happiness to a creature whose only other purpose in life was to destroy everything—

Marshall would never. But why risk it? If Gumball’s mind was filled now with warning, if he was really spending so much time deliberating, how could this ever be natural and good? If he couldn’t even remember any good times of the past, if he could only remember fear or distrust, then why make that call, why give this proposal of sorts any chance? Why even bother to take that risk: it had been wrong then and nothing but tension had grown over the years and so it would be wrong again.

But then if it was so terribly against nature, why had it felt so good? Why had every muscle in his body relaxed the moment those long, cool hands slipped through his open window and cradled his face, just strong enough to hold him without making him feel trapped? In that moment, without thinking, he had sighed when he had probably had every right to scream.

In that moment, Marshall Lee had been only the person he was, and not _the demon_ or _the vampire_ or all that he had the potential to be: he’d been only a smiling boy at the window, asking for a chance at happiness and to share it.

 

* * *

 

Marshall Lee only slept because he had to. Having made it to his cave just before the redness on the backs of his arms began to blister, he fell to an exhausted sleep almost as soon as he was within the safe shadow of his home, finding dreamless bliss with the taste of sugar just barely lingering on his smiling lips.

 

One night. Just one more night.

He knew Prince Fancy-Pants. He knew that poufy pink genius wasn’t nearly as smart as he seemed to be, and that with matters such as these he was bound to overthink.

So Marshall would wait. If the prince came to him, well that would be even more exciting, but he wouldn’t. As Marshall paced his carpeted living room, hideous fluorescent light pouring in from his kitchen, he knew that Bubba would be wide awake too. He would be agonizing over every little detail of Marshall’s last visit, and the one before that and probably every time they’d ever been in the same room together since that very first party Marshall had crashed all those years ago, trying to find the subtext, trying to find the precedent for last night’s impulsive behaviour.

Maybe it was cruel, or maybe it was expected of him to go about it this way—that rockstar swagger; that aloof, vampire indifference—whatever: one more night alone and a few hour’s sleep, plus another day of real-life in his home-made kingdom would run out the ticker tape on that high-strung genius’ single-line mind. When he’d exhausted all avenues, asked himself every question, agonized over every self-conscious detail, the candy prince’s raving demands would boil down to the most important points, and then they would be able to have a real conversation.

Marshall thought that maybe he deserved the ranting and the raving and the questions and the demands—after all, whatever friendship they’d had, hadn’t ended on good terms—but if he meant to do it right this time, if he meant to lay it all out on the table and make this _good_ , then he would have to be patient, and he would have to wait.

He himself had to decide just how to proceed. He sat on his floor and pulled out a record and set it to play, laying back in midair to stare at the ceiling, telling himself to just be patient.

As much as he had wanted to rush right back there as soon as the sun had set, what ideas would Gumball get if Marshall came up to his window yet again, unable to hold himself back, unable to wait for some confirmation of mutual interest? What tone would that set? It was for the foundation of this relationship—whatever it was going to turn out to be, if anything—that he sit tight and let Bubba decide how he was going to react.  

The kiss had been bad enough; the kiss had been brash and unreasonable and impulsive and even if Marshall couldn’t stop licking his lips, hoping that maybe a little of that sugar would still be there, that was perhaps the root of the conflict he felt now.

What had Bubba thought, in that moment? Had he been afraid? Had he been relieved? Had he maybe wanted more even then, already and after so long?

Marshall took a deep breath.

No. He’d said it before and he had meant it, that this time would not be like it had been before.

Marshall would claim innocence: with Gumball, it would always be innocence. Just a kiss, just simple, and no doubt the Candy God would be thinking he’d stolen that kiss in attempt to steal a taste of that colour. Again would come those accusations, those curses.

 _Any opportunity_ …

It was never like that. He had never intended for it to be like that. He would never try to, or even ask for—no. Not again. Not like it had been before. This had have a base of mutual trust and he knew that was where things had fallen short before. Marshall knew that it wasn’t easy to trust someone born of the Nightosphere—someone so easily called _demon_ , despite his capability to love. He knew what he was and what he looked like to people, but all that time Gumball had looked at him with a glimmer of fear—even if that fear sometimes seemed only to quicken is living heart—and always there had been that seed of doubt that Marshall had acted as the demon, trying to undermine or manipulate everything the Prince had worked so hard for all his life. It had never been about that, never. With Bubba, it would always be innocent.  

Maybe Marshall had been cruel about certain things, but never out of turn. Maybe he had belittled the whole great endeavour, but even if those mutant things were creepy as fuck, he had to hand it to Bubba for rising up all on his own like he had, for having the tenacity and the strength and the mind—even in what must have been an unevolved state—to rise and grow and strive to be something else.

It was understandable that he would be so protective of them, of course. But Marshall and Bubba were more similar that the Prince was willing to accept, and it hurt him in a way that he couldn’t describe to remember how Gumball had said time and time again that the candy people were his kind, and that he and Marshall were and always would be just too different, that it couldn’t work because Marshall had been born undead, and Gumball had invented himself.

If Gumball only knew all that he sacrificed. If he only knew how difficult it was to be so _bad_ at being undead and how his heart ached and how he hungered and how lonely he was for anything that might curl up next to him and call itself his kin.

Nobody here wanted him. Nobody here would give him a moment of their time to reassure him that there was a place in Ooo for someone like him. Nobody thought that the vampire would care, or even have a thought to care, that if he were unhappy he would just float on the wind and find something else, something new. They didn’t know him. They didn’t know how he had floated for nearly _two hundred years_ , over trees, over mountains and snow and endless and agonizing expanses of salt water and desert and _nothingness_. Those civilizations were comparably _Cro-Magnon_ in their development.

And Gumball called him Vampire King. What _vampires_? As if there were any left. As if they hadn’t all gone insane after The Last War. As if, on a whim and with poetry in mind, Marshall Lee hadn’t gone out and killed the very last of the wanderers for fear that they might find his little oasis of freaky little life forms here in the part of the Earth they called Ooo.

So it had taken two hundred years, but he had done it.

And he had returned, unable to confess what might have gotten him a slap on the back and a cigar back home—kill your own kind? Fucking harcrore demon shit right there. He had left that boy so horribly, he had gone without a trace and disappeared for two centuries and he had come back expecting nothing and he hadn’t been disappointed.

That didn’t mean he hadn’t felt the pain of rejection, that when he’d come up to those gates and the people had run away and the Prince had come himself to see what the matter was in the middle of the night, he’d gotten only a civil smile and barely a glimmer of recognition.

_Oh. Marshall. What brings you here?_

He should have said it then, that it just couldn’t work. He couldn’t be alone, he couldn’t wander, he couldn’t make his own people, he couldn’t even make his own family and he’d killed all those uncivilized things that had been made in his image. Nobody in the world could stand to look at him save for the Prince and nobody at all would ever love him again until he made it work with Gumball or went back home.

But they didn’t want him there either.

Not bad enough for hell. Not good enough for love.

All those times they’d called him a monster, they hadn’t even been able to guess at how right they were.

And so what would Prince Gumball be thinking now? Had he blocked it all out, did he remember just how nasty they had once been to each other? Did he remember those centuries of curiosity that sparked what had become such a toxic relationship built on little more than selfish bargaining? It hadn’t been a favourable outcome, so no: Marshall guessed that the Prince had chosen to forget all but the details requisite to form some logical timeline in his head.

It had had such potential, but both of them had been inexperienced. It had been clear that Gumball’s experience with people had been, until that point, mainly political or otherwise carried out with that air of indulgence, as if Marshall had to be patronized, his moods or whims mollified. He had never known the company of an equal, and while Marshall made no claim to be as mathematically inclined or scientifically accomplished, they _were_ equals.

It had also been clear that, until that point, that the Prince had not ever encountered a person who was his _physical_ equal, either.

And that, well… _that_ had been…it had been something. Admittedly, Marshall had blundered there too: nobody had ever been so eager with him, nobody had looked at him quite the same way Bubba had, like the taboo and the danger had made it better for him. He’d thought the vampire should like that part of it too, but always hearing how _wrong_ it was had very nearly broken his heart. He didn’t understand that.  

But he told himself again that it wouldn’t be like it had been before. The both of them weren’t so very alone now, and there was no need for the bargaining and the inevitable resentment.

No. It would _not_ be like it had been before.

Was it so wrong to just want to be close to someone? To feel loved and wanted and not just hungered for? Even if…

He groaned aloud. These thoughts were poison. They were hopelessly unfair.

It had been a long time. A very long time. Maybe the Prince had changed, and with a sinking heart Marshall told himself that maybe he himself had changed as well—who knew what might happen this time around? He didn’t want to make those assumptions.

To make assumptions now of how it would be was foolish; no need to get his hopes up, no need to dash his dreams so quickly. If he needed to walk away from that impulsive decision he’d made, then there would be a chilly distance between them just like there had been for years. If the fates allowed him even just a little warmth, well, life was too long to exclude any possibility.

He stared at the ceiling and told himself that his boundaries were made up of words, and that if he could only be deaf to his own rambling thoughts and be strong and do what was right before reasoning or justification, then his heart would lead him where he needed to be.

He just hoped that it might be able to find him a place just a little closer to the boy he had never quite forgotten. 

After all, what did he have to lose?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey so congrats for getting through this! Extra points if you can understand the weird way my rambling mind likes to structure sentences and paragraphs. 
> 
> But this is important, I promise! Those two deal with things so differently! Poor Marshall, he knows why nobody can trust him but that's all he wants. 
> 
> I promise there'll be some dialogue and intrigue soon.


	3. Give and Take

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a lot of conversation....

* * *

 

Prince Gumball was surrounded. There were probably two hundred candy people in the palace main hall tonight, music was blasting, bodies bustling and laughing and singing and dancing. The place was an absolute horror of a mess with banners and string lights and plastic cups everywhere, chips and candy wrappers crunched underfoot while snack tables remained in constant need of restocking. His palace staff were mingling with the crowd, dancing as they pleased with trays of h’ordeurves held high or forgotten on tables. He didn’t care. Candy people liked to dance, and he wasn’t going to reprimand any of his sweet employees for having fun at a party.

Balloons would pop now and then and make the prince jump. He kept to himself, even though the goal of this party was to distract him. Marshall Lee had kissed him at the window two nights before, and his nerves hadn’t been able to handle much more waiting so he’d planned an event today for his people and the party had commenced an hour before sundown.

There were cheers at the door. Nervously, Gumball turned but it was only Fionna who had entered with Cake in tow. He took a deep breath, both relieved and just a little more on edge as the night wore on with no sign of the vampire.

Even as he made his way to greet his friend, Gumball had to remind himself that the sun had set no more than an hour ago, and that if Marshall had it in mind to pay him a visit, he wouldn’t be likely to rush over here as soon as he was physically able. Hopefully, he would have something to eat first.

He hoped Fionna wouldn’t see his flush.

“Dude,” she drew out the word, bending a little at the knees, “now _this_ is a party, man, look at this!”

Prince Gumball gave something of a nervous laugh. “Yes, well, there was certainly a good turn-out.”

“No political agenda tonight?” She asked, eyeing the snacks to which Cake had already ungraciously gravitated toward. He heard her from across the room.

“Oh, Fiona, they have _pigs in a blanket_! Fi _on_ na! Come check this out!” 

Gumball gave his head a little shake, but his stomach flipped. “I have no ulterior motives this evening so please,” he moved out of the way and with a sweeping gesture offered her passage to the snacks, “I can see I’m not keeping your undivided attention. Help yourself to refreshments.”

Fionna laughed, snorted and punched his arm as she passed. He tried not to let the pain register. “Thanks PG.” She laughed again. “Refreshments…”

He took a deep breath and turned, smiling for his guests who would now and then clamour around him, tugging at his sleeve or his pant leg only to ask how the party was coming along, or offer an expression of love and then become distracted by something else. A large Cherry Popsicle waddled by on his two wooden legs and nodded something of a greeting on his way to talk to Manfred, wafting cool air as he passed.

The music seemed suddenly louder and the prince’s anxieties crested as voices around him died down. This time when Gumball turned to the castle doors, he knew who would be there.

Marshall Lee stood plainly in the centre of the doorway, both doors opened and when Gumball and a number of others turned to look at him, he quickly looked away and rose from the ground maybe less than a foot, and made his way into the main hall.

“Marsh- _ull_!” Fionna hooted from the snack table. “Whoop-whoop crank it _up_!”

And someone did actually turn up the music and the candy people cheered and Marshall was forgotten, floating closer to where the prince stood, feeling just as weightless and quite ill.

“Hey,” the vampire greeted, voice too soft to be natural. He landed gently on the ground and looked around the room, shyly, black hair falling. Prince Gumball stared at him, feeling light headed and not knowing what to say.

He had prepared a speech. He had prepared demands. He had a thousand questions and now all of it felt contrived and unimportant. Marshall was standing next to him and he was again just the boy at his window and not a demon or even really a vampire or anything more than his endearingly awkward smile and windswept hair.

“Marshall,” Prince Gumball said his name in the same way: too softly to be natural, and then he cleared his throat and looked to catch Fionna’s eye, which might have been a mistake. She waved enthusiastically and Marshall lifted his hand in greeting, but she wasn’t going to come over to talk to them until she’d successfully beaten Cake at a contest of how many marshmallows they could fit in their mouths.

One of the Marshmallow children walked past her as she crammed one more between uneven teeth, and she made some deranged little expression in Marshall’s direction but flushed deeply and turned away when the she saw how the Prince watched her, too.

Marshall cleared his throat and looked around the room again while the prince watched.

“Bubba, what _is_ all this?”

The prince just shook his head.

“You know I almost left when I heard the music,” Marshall said quietly, “but then I thought maybe…but you weren’t upstairs…” he shook his head. “What…?”

Prince Gumball didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what was proper of if he should _be_ proper but all those things he had meant to say still weighed on him and he needed some fresh air and quiet.

“Come on,” he said gently, “Fionna’s got a gob full of glycerine now. We need to talk.”

Marshall nodded, hands in his pockets. “Will it be weird if we slip away together?” He asked. “Doesn’t seem proper for a prince to be ditching his own party for the company of its most notorious crasher.”

“You wouldn’t have come if I’d invited you,” Gumball said quickly, and the vampire smiled despite himself and nodded.

“It’s fine,” the prince continued, “Fionna will tell anyone who asks her about the Rock Candy Mountain people. They’ll assume our talk is damage control.”

“ _Is_ this talk damage control?” Marshall asked, following at a walking pace as Gumball took the lead out the main hall doors.

Gumball didn’t really know what to say.

They were all the way to the prince’s quarters before either of them said another word, and Gumball had closed his door and turned to face the room before he realized he’d led the boy to his bedroom.

The vampire didn’t say anything. Nothing sly or sarcastic, he just stood on the carpeted floor and rocked back on his heels a little before picking up his feet to float. He seemed to catch himself though, and stood on the ground normally again and cleared his throat.

“You’re not saying anything,” he said quietly. He looked away and sighed. “I know it must be bad if you’re not saying anything.”

“Marshall…” Prince Gumball sighed. All the things he had meant to say had truly escaped him.  

“And it must be really bad if you’re throwing a party,” he continued, “either that means that you’re still running circles around yourself overthinking, or you were really trying to deter me from coming.” He looked at the prince, his discomfort absolutely genuine. It seemed like he was one harsh word away from floating out the window, and Prince Gumball realized just then that he wanted Marshall to stay.

“I…” Gumball shook his head.

“Ask me one question,” Marshall said. “That’s what I was going to say to you, if you started ranting and raving at me,” he was smiling gently. “Just pick one, the most important question, and ask it and then tell me what comes next.”

Prince Gumball was quietly awed. He might have expected more brashness, or stubbornness, or something grand and emotional, but he hadn’t expected this maturity.

“Sometimes I really do forget that you’re older than me,” the prince sighed.

Marshall laughed quietly. “I don’t always act like it,” he agreed, “but you have to give me some credit, you know: I _have_ done this relationship thing before.”

“I know,” Gumball nodded. “I…and I did have a speech,” he said, laughing at himself just a little. He sat on a bench at the foot of his bed. He groaned, feeling at those lines on his forehead with his fingertips. “And that would have ruined everything, wouldn’t it?”

“I know you enough to know that if you don’t get it out of your system, you’ll boil over,” Marshall said, voice sounding far away. When Gumball looked up, he saw that he had turned and was now taking a seat in that wingback reading chair. He rested his head against the back of it and appeared to take a deep breath, eyes closing.

“What do you want, Marshall?” Gumball asked him.

Marshall opened his eyes and they were dark and calm and tired. “I want you back in my life,” he said simply.

“You said that,” Gumball prompted, “that doesn’t tell me anything. I mean, what doyou _want_?” he made a little gesture between the two of them. “You said that it wasn’t going to be like before. I want you to tell me what you have in mind for this time.”

Marshall nodded and sat forward in his chair. “Fair enough,” he sighed. “I just…I want for us to be close again. I want for things to be good.” He shook his head. “Other than that, I can’t say I have any plans, exactly. I just…I can’t keep going on like this.”

Gumball blinked, trying to absorb what might have been some subtle passive aggressiveness in his tone, but dismissed it and felt a little sorry for trying to find something to criticize before they’d even really begun this conversation.

“I want for things to be good too,” he agreed, speaking slowly, choosing his words carefully. “But, Marshall…how do you expect things to just _be_ good? You can’t decide for things like this to just happen.”

“I realize that,” Marshall replied, maybe a little hotly as he glanced up at the prince, “but I _can_ decide that I’m going to try to make this work. And that’s what I’ve decided to do, to try.”

Again, Gumball was at a loss for words. “Just like that?”

“Yeah,” the vampire said quietly, “just like that.” He seemed to hesitate. “Why? What did you have in mind?”

The candy prince was flustered. Here the King of the Vampires was discussing terms of a relationship, just exactly the way that he himself might arrange such a thing. There was logic to this, and reason, and yes, he was being very reasonable and calm and polite and all of it was so unlike Marshall Lee that Gumball had trouble digesting any of it. He’d spent the majority of this conversation in something of a stupor, just sitting there at a loss for words. 

“I didn’t have anything in mind,” Gumball muttered honestly, “before you came to my window and kissed me, Marshall.”

He looked up, expecting to see that vampire smirk but was surprised to see just how serious he had become.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said quickly, “really, I feel terrible.”

“Well,” Gumball, completely taken aback, “I’m glad to hear—”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Marshall said, eyes widening, “but I’m sorry if I scared you.”

Gumball had to laugh. “Scare me? No, Marshall, I wasn’t…” he smiled, unable to hide it and shook his head. “You didn’t scare me.”

“It was just a kiss.”

“I know.”

“No, I mean…it was _just_ a kiss. I wasn’t—”

“I know,” the prince laughed, “I get it.”

“I’m just, I’m so lonely,” Marshall said suddenly, and then seemed to regret it. He sighed and sat back in his chair, long hands resting in his lap as he stared forward at nothing. “I never should have left this place.”

“Nobody made you go,” Gumball said quietly, but as soon as the words came out he wished they hadn’t. “You just kind of left,” he added, looking at his own hands.

“I know. And I wish I hadn’t.” He answered, but not with the sharpness that he might have been entitled to. “I don’t know what to say to answer your question. I want to be happy again. I want to feel something, you know? I don’t want to be alone in the dark and the cold anymore. I don’t want to go to these stupid parties and feel like everyone is staring at me when nobody can even bear to look at me. I don’t want to go on hoping that you’ll…I dunno…” he let out a frustrated rush of breath and Gumball looked up at him, “marry Fionna or something stupid like that so it’ll all be over and done with.”

“Fionna?” Gumball asked, making his surprise plain.

Marshall gave a helpless shrug.

“Why _Fionna_?”

Again, the shrug. “Oh, I dunno, Bubba, because she’s a girl? A _real_ girl and not some…”

“Ah,” Prince Gumball resisted the urge to become defensive. He took a deep breath, and in his pause, he understood. “Oh, Marshall,” he breathed, “is that really what you had hoped for?”

“Maybe just this past year or so, I think about it off-and-on, but only when it becomes unbearable to be with you both,” Marshall spoke now with that deep, sort of crooning voice as he slouched further into the wingback chair, hoping maybe that it would swallow him up. He shielded his face with a steepled hand at his forehead, his tone holding nothing of that mock-enticing swagger Gumball had known, rather it seemed strained only with the weight of his emotion.

“I really do love that girl,” Marshall said, running that hand over his face. He looked at Gumball, tossing him some poignant glance that Gumball immediately accepted, nodding as he agreed that yes, that girl—that wildly strong and impulsive and fearless girl—was indeed, very loveable.  

“So do I,” the prince said, even though the words didn’t need to be said. “But even if she wasn’t dear to me in so many other ways, you know I would never marry a human. You know that I can’t.”

Marshall nodded slowly. “Well, just a foolhardy day-dream then, but I can’t tell you how much it hurt me to want such a thing.”

Gumball gave his assent to that too. He remembered all the things he had thought while Marshall had been away those long years, those hopes that had soared only to be dashed down quickly and buried and immediately regretted.

“Well, it’s not going to happen,” Gumball said, daring even to smile just a little bit. “I want to be happy. And an arrangement like that with Fionna the Human would make all three of us miserable. Could you imagine?” He smirked now and Marshall took the bait and smiled, even if his eyes remained sad.

The prince felt an overwhelming need to make that smile touch his friend’s eyes, and the desire to mend what had been broken had never been so strong. Where was the resentment from yesterday? Where were the demands? Where were the questions about where had had been and what he had done and seen?

Now, he wondered why after all those years of grand adventure—a lifetime or two’s worth—Marshall Lee, this punk-rock nightosphere demon, had come back to him so quietly and with eyes that always settled back down to a sadness that seemed only neutral.

Marshall had no demands, or if he did they were simple. He had already said that he wanted to be happy, and he wanted to try. Maybe Gumball had passed these ten years or so pegging the vampire for the brash, guitar wielding _boy_ he had been so long ago, and while he wasn’t without his exuberance at times even still, there was some little part of him that had hardened.

“When you said that you didn’t want it to be like before—”

“I meant it,” Marshall said quickly.

“I know,” Gumball sighed, looking up, cautiously meeting those dark eyes, “what did you mean, exactly? What don’t you want it to be like?”

Marshall stared at him for a good, long moment, stared until the prince’s heart tripped, and then his eyes simply drifted away and he settled back into himself. Marshall opened his mouth to speak, and then licking his lips, hesitated.

“It was toxic, before,” Marshall said with a softness that didn’t match his words. “I loved you,” he looked at Gumball again and again Gumball’s heart struggled to maintain its steady pace. He wanted to say the words back, but Marshall gave just the slightest negation, just the subtlest shake of his head and carried on.

“But I did terrible things to you, Bubba,” Marshall all but whispered, “it was give and take for so long with us, and at first it seemed like that was the only way we could make it work. Then, as if it couldn’t get any worse, it turned into a game, don’t you remember?”

The prince didn’t want to remember, but his hands had gone cold with the rush of memory flooding in. He struggled to maintain eye contact, but Marshall was not letting him out of this one. He was going to say these words when Gumball had expected everyone in the world to forget how it had been between them just as he believed that he himself had forgotten.

Even as a little shock of emotion bubbled up now, he pushed it down.

“I try not to think about it,” he admitted finally.

“Well I haven’t been able to forget,” Marshall said, this time with a bit of the force Gumball had expected since the beginning. “I pushed the boundaries of what I could get away with,” Marshall continued, even as the prince looked away. “I put you through things that one should never make a loved-one feel, not even a demon. I did them with the idea that I deserved it, because of the things you had done to me, too. Maybe in the end we did deserve each other.”

“I never intended to do anything _to_ you, Marshall,” Bubba Gumball said suddenly and with all the conviction he could manage, voice wavering. Even as he said it, he fought himself silently, telling himself that it hadn’t ever been his fault, but… “I swear, I never meant for it to be like that.”

“But be honest with yourself, Bubba,” Marshall said calmly, “if you remember it at all you’ll remember thinking that after all I had taken from you, you had some right to take from me, too.”

The words were wrong. The words didn’t sound like real words, it was like some new kind of melody had been strung together and all it meant was blame. Gumball struggled to accept it, to say that yes, it had been his fault too, that he had driven that stake into the heart of this thing just as much as Marshall had. It was true, and yet it was so wrong.

“I thought you had the right to it,” Marshall continued earnestly, leaning forward again and placing his hand over his chest. “Even if I resented you, I thought that it was the least I could do, and I guess it was and I guess I didn’t have the right to resent you—”

“Marshall, you had every right to resent me,” Bubba said, still unbelieving of his own words, and then hearing them out loud he realized with crushing certainty that they were true. Remembering it was like putting a new filter over the room they were both in. Like remembering a name, it was the complete and instant recognition of memory and he remembered himself, or a version of himself that seemed like a whole other person from fifty lifetimes ago, just two hundred years younger and thinking it such a powerful thing to have a vampire in his bed. Drunk on that power, and with ideas of retribution on his side to justify every dangerous tryst, that power had been all the more the more deliciously intoxicating knowing that Marshall had felt he’d had no choice but to submit.

That they had been together, known each other in an intimately physical way, _that_ part of it had never quite faded from his memory. But a queasy glimpse of that shy smile, that confusingly articulate demon demanding nothing but a kiss at his window had dug up a memory of a past version of Gumball himself, that didn’t fit the mold of the man he had built up in his mind any more than Marshall seemed to fit his.

But Gumball saw it now, in a flash as clear as the land lit up by a crack of lightning and then it was gone, the image of himself as a dominant man. The memory was bitter, the flash of it leaving an abstract imprint on his mind that he could ever cut such a shape, especially as he stood next to this vampire.

It never should have been that way.

“I _fed_ on you, Bubba.”

Prince Gumball snapped back to reality. Yes, that was true as well, wasn’t it?

“That doesn’t excuse…” he said the words in a rush of breath and trailed off. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees and held his forehead in his hands, staring at the pointed tips of his polished shoes.

“It doesn’t,” Marshall agreed quietly from where he sat. “But those are the facts, PG, and it’s all in the past. Look, whatever I felt then and felt since, all I feel now is sorry. All I’ve felt for some time is sorry, and that’s how I knew it was time to talk about it.”

Gumball shook his head. He had no more words. He sat there, as dumb as he had been earlier in the awe of the vampire’s new maturity, dumb now in self-loathing and asking himself a thousand questions in an avalanche of memory.

How had he suppressed it? How had he managed going on all these years being afraid of Marshall Lee, afraid of his return, afraid of his presence at the castle, afraid to see his face in the window and afraid of him to be alone with their mutual human friend? How _absurd_. How had he gone on, year after year in Marshall’s absence with those girls from faraway lands who didn’t know who he was or didn’t recognize the Prince without the crown? How had he let himself be so sweet to others, how had he let himself remember Marshall as just that selfish boy from the Nightosphere, a leather-clad _fling_ no more than a phase in his spotty past of love and lovers and friends. All those nights spent awake, and he’d only remembered hungry demon eyes, and nothing of what he’d done to provoke them.

And despite it all came incredible words from across the room: “I miss you.”

Gumball dared to let out a laugh, a short little sardonic snort of a thing, feeling emotion close his throat as the sound barely escaped it and he sniffed.

He was grateful that Marshall wasn’t trying to comfort him. He didn’t deserve that comfort, and maybe Marshall agreed at least that much, even if he was willing to put the past behind them.

“I didn’t think I had missed you,” Gumball said, feeling raw, “but then the other night you were in this room again and you were almost touching the ceiling and I remembered…” he shook his head. “I can’t believe you came back.”

“Neither can I,” Marshall replied lightly, the sound of a smile in his voice even though Gumball had eyes only for his shoes and the carpet. “But here we are.”

Gumball nodded, helplessly, feeling empty, wondering how he could have ever justified all those things he had wanted to say to Marshall tonight. He was absolutely humiliated.

“If we’re gonna do this,” Marshall said, “we’re gonna have rules.”

Gumball did look up this time, and did so quickly enough to see a change in Marshall’s expression from some hard, pensive frown to something like shock and then pity. Gumball sniffed again.

“What rules? Marshall, I’m a monster, how could you—”

Marshall Lee cut him off, floating up from his chair in a lazy arc to sit beside the prince, confounding him with laughter.

“Don’t be so _dramatic_ ,” Marshall said plainly, “we are not going to have this conversation, Bubba. _You_ don’t get to tell _me_ who the monster is.” Prince Gumball nodded when Marshall stared him down, but was unsure and leaned cautiously away.

“I am a _demon_ —or well, a half-demon—and I spent a hundred years of my adolescence in the

Nightosphere living the life of a prince in Hell, Bubba, so when you call yourself a monster—frankly, I find that offensive.”

“But—”

“Look, we can’t go on acting like we did. Whatever it was that we put each other through, however we managed it, it made our power over each other equal, but that power was poison. I don’t want it to be like that this time. I don’t want to stand on a different plane than you just because of what I am and what I do and where I come from and all that other bullshit—I don’t want to have to level any ground by means of destruction and degradation just to even out the playing-field. We are going to be equal because we are going to start equal. No resentment. No fear. Forgive yourself and forgive me and this will be the last time we talk about this. That’s one of my rules.”

“But I—”

Marshall wouldn’t look away from him. “Bubba,” he said his name slowly, “listen to me: do you think I couldn’t have stopped you any time I wanted to? Think about it.”

Gumball hesitated, his chest tight with fear, leaning back now on his hand as the vampire continued to stare at him. “Are…are you hypnotizing me?”

Marshall sat back and sighed. “People who are hypnotized don’t ask if they’re hypnotized, Gumball, Glob. Come on now. Think about it, be rational, yes? You’re always the rational one. You could have had me murdered in the light of day for sucking all that gorgeous colour out of you, and I could have finished you off just as easily if you had ever pushed me far enough. But neither of us let it get that far; we never got so far as real hatred so no, you are _not_ a monster, not for what you did to me.”

Gumball let out a rushed breath. He heard the words, he tried desperately to accept them, to accept a way out of the horrible feeling in his gut that he had done something so terrible. There was blame still: he was guilty, but he hadn’t the energy to articulate it to himself just then. Maybe that blame would be reserved for private meditations. He nodded.

“But wait, _not a monster for what I’ve done to you,_ what do you mean? I—”

Again, Marshall laughed and lowered his voice. “You’re made of _bubblegum_ ,” he said, and there in that moment were those gleaming eyes and irresistible grin and deep, gravelly baritone voice that made Prince Gumball flush despite all that had transpired between them tonight. He felt those eyes looking at him, really _looking_ at him as if trying to see the layers of his sweet flesh and white bone and that deep magenta blood through all this conversation.

As if they hadn’t just talked about this, as if they hadn’t already condemned their give-and-take, Gumball looked at Marshall Lee too, at the faint greyish-purple quality to his white skin—not as sallow as a zombie, even if he could definitely be pegged as undead for it. There were dark circles under his eyes that made it look as though he’d spent the last thousand years without sleep, and that grey-purple colour was deepest at the flesh on the insides of his lips. The tongue which periodically darted out to moisten them was not pink.

His skin would be cold and it would taste vaguely of salt even though the boy didn’t sweat. His hair was long about his pointed ears and dark and just a little oily at the root. Marshall reached up to touch the prince’s own hair, smiling as he did, eyes just a little sad still. The gesture was intimate only because it was allowed, not because of any particular sweetness or care taken in the movement, but still, Prince Gumball held his breath until Marshall lowered his hand and his gaze.  

While Gumball’s hair wasn’t exactly hair—not like Marshall’s hair, which was like fur in its own way—it was what only he would call hair; dense fibres that sprouted from his scalp only, still molecularly constructed of sugar and lightly oiled so that the strands didn’t clump together and lock up—oiled like a package of licorice shoe-strings. He could run his fingers through it, but Marshall had always said that it felt sticky.

Marshall didn’t say it now. He looked the pink prince over one more time, still smiling pleasantly and then sighed. “So: Candy-Glob—”

Gumball rolled his eyes, forcing air out through his nose but smiled all the same.

Marshall grinned. “Bubba. What do you say, huh? I’ve got nothing going on, you—well, you always have _something_ going on.” He looked away for just a second, shy. “Want to see where this can go?”

“Marshall…” Prince Gumball hesitated, he shook his head. He felt like shit. He didn’t want to see _anyone_ , but remembered with a little groan of dread that there was a party going on downstairs and that Fionna was there along with a hundred candy-people who would soon wonder where he had gone off to. He didn’t have the energy for them, or for their questions, not even for their love; he didn’t have the energy for this conversation to go on much longer; he didn’t have the energy to make any kind of decision at all.

Marshall stood and Gumball felt a wave of panic course through him. He lifted his head and looked up at Marshall who stood on the ground before him.

“I’m not going to sit here and try to convince you,” Marshall said quietly. “But you and me are sorta both coming to understand just how long _forever_ is. If at the end of it, or at the end of the next apocalypse, or in another thousand years there’s just one person in this world who I can call my friend, I hope it would be you.”

Gumball was touched, touched by all of it: his uncommon sweetness, this new maturity, this conversation that was absolutely forthright and absolutely necessary and healthy but painful. His heart seemed like it was beating too fast and too slow at the same time.  

“I want to be your friend, Marshall, I want to trust you…I miss you too, and I—” the words were true but came out sounding hollow. Marshall Lee was already shaking his head, and Gumball was again left at a loss.

“You shouldn’t trust me, but I’m telling you that you can,” he said, lifting off the ground now. He was preparing to go and Gumball stood, not wanting for him to leave—not just yet—despite the tightness in his chest that only got worse when he looked at him. A little voice told him that if he was already feeling like shit because of Marshall, that this wasn’t ever going to be right, but with a pang of shame he realized that he felt like shit because he’d been forced to remember his own actions, not the vampire’s.

“…I know we were never meant to be fantastic lovers or anything, but all I’m asking for is a little company. A little…a little _congeniality_ , Gumball, that’s it.” He floated to the window and landed briefly only to unhook the latch and open the stained-glass panels.

“You’re…you’re welcome to stay, Marshall…the party…” Gumball offered helplessly, unwilling to promise anything, unwilling to agree to any terms feeling how he felt. His heart sunk, knowing that after Marshall left he would feel more alone than he had felt in years, and that despite their differences he understood something about Gumball that nobody else in Ooo did: although he had shunned his purpose, Marshall understood the pressures of destiny—not to mention the responsibility of his sovereign duties—and he understood the impossible loneliness of immortality. Marshall Lee knew how the world worked outside the Candy Kingdom walls; his intelligence was so different from his own but he _was_ intelligent and all those years of conversation…

Much too late, Gumball recalled that lost glimmer of happiness he’d been wracking his brain for. He remembered nights laying awake, not talking about science or mutants or killing or demons or blood or biology but about _people_ and music and stars… 

But Marshall was leaving, standing now on the windowsill.

“I wasn’t really invited,” he said quietly of the once-again forgotten party, “but you should come over—sometime—to my place. I have electric heat and everything…I promise my house is suitable for the living.”

Gumball swallowed his emotion and nodded. Looking away from the window, he struggled to say anything at all. “I…um…” he ran his hand over his face. Words, just more words spat out as his mind reeled and his stomach churned. “…Yeah, maybe.”

“I’m sorry I kissed you.”

Gumball looked up, just a little startled by the gravity of Marshall’s tone, but he saw the boy fall back into the night and before he could reach out or open his mouth, he was gone and Gumball stood alone in his room.

He sighed and sat down on the same cushioned bench again, shaking hands balled into fists, emotion spent and nerves shot.

“…Don’t be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gumball realizes in this chapter that Marshall has grown up a bit since their last real conversation--but not too much, don't worry. He's floored by his ability to talk rationally about these serious matters, almost to the point were he can't quite grasp what Marshall is saying at first, because he's expecting it all to be passive aggressive bullshit. Turns out that Gumball kind of blocked out the memory of being something of a tyrant--but come on, we all know that he only got away with it because Marshall let him. ;) 
> 
> There's a lot of tight-chest, slow breathing, inarticulate, flabbergasted, noncommittal disbelief here on Gumball's side, so thanks for making an effort to get through this chapter. Marshall's a bit pissed at the end of it, kind of over Gumball's dramatic self-loathing. I am too, so hopefully he gets over that pretty quick and we get to some action in the next chapter...


	4. Free Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Marshall takes one giant step back from everything, and out of context of his current life and lifestyle, meditates on hard truths and discovers what it is that his black little demon heart wants most of all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***Trigger warning! PLEASE Read***
> 
> NOTE EDIT:  
> Hey so I've had this up for about a week and it occurred to me that this chapter might be misunderstood by some. 
> 
> (Spoiler alert) 
> 
> What happens at the end of this chapter is not by any means a suicide attempt by this character. While there is fantasy about oneness with nature and achieving a sense of peace, please do not mistake this for a longing for death: this character is immortal, he is supernatural and super human, but think of these longings more like the kinds of passive goals for serenity as one who frequently meditates might which to achieve.
> 
> This might just be me being overcautious here, but I know that there are a lot of young people on this website, and I don't want this wistful rambling of an immortal teenage demon to inspire anyone who can't survive a free-fall from 40 000 ft (ie, ALL OF YOU). If you think this kind of thing could be a trigger for you, please, please, please skip this chapter. It's fluff. It's not even very good fluff, so really, you won't need it to get on with the story. If this is an issue for you, there are a ton of websites you can visit to chat privately with people who are [more] qualified [than I] to properly help with any problem, no matter how big or small, in a free and confidential manner. If you aren't on your computer and you're worried about privacy, open a new Incognito Window, and the search for these places won't be saved into your browser's search history. I don't know who you are, or what you're dealing with, but all I can say is that I'm a grown-ass adult writing cartoon fan-fiction and I LOVE my life, so trust me when I say that it does get better. I'd hug all of you if I could. 
> 
> *LoveLoveLoveLove*

 He stood outside in the cool of the night, eyes closed, back to the open mouth of his cave. That quaint little house standing sturdily and unassuming even in its odd location, had been left unlocked with all its whirling and whizzing and buzzing electronic appliances alone in the dark.

Arms at his sides, Marshall took a deep, conscious breath, drawing unnecessary air into his lungs, feeling the muscles of his ribs expanding with the slow inhale, then contracting with the release. He felt the muscles of his back tighten and move, he imagined his bones deep in his undead flesh; cold and resilient, he was solid, and as pretty as the words to the contrary could be, he was alive.

He took another slow breath, tilting his head back just slightly, tasting the sweetness of the air and the mineral quality lent to it by the water and the stone surrounding him. Turning his arms, palms facing outward and fingers splayed, he breathed consciously again, back arching just slightly with the expansion of his ribs and fell into the motion, floating up and falling backward just slightly.

Rising up higher and in midair he turned, eyes still closed and limbs loose, twirling sideways as if in water with his arms feeling weightless about him. Willing the movement, he rose higher and out of the cave and up, feeling cold and fresh and free.

He didn’t open his eyes until he approached the roof of cloud that swept across the sky, smudging out all vision of stars and moon. Not fearing the height or the cold, yet not caring to look down either, he sighed and let his face settle into some neutral expression of bliss. Mind cleared, he tilted back again, drawing his knees closer to his chest and then stretching out horizontal, he looked up at the underside of grey clouds above. Propelling himself along in no particular direction, he watched them sweep past more quickly than he cared to watch them go. He imagined sailing forever, imagined staying in this place in the universe while the earth turned under him, forever in darkness and travelling the globe.

He tried to think of nothing. He groaned aloud, trying hard not to slip into conscious thought—not even to despair it—and closed his eyes and rose higher still. With arms held just a little apart from his body, he spun gently then faster in a barrel roll, rising higher as the cloud cover became thick and his clothes absorbed the frigid moisture. He pushed on, pushed higher over the cloud, unhurt by the cold and by the wind his movement made. He felt pressure on the top of his head and over his shoulders, pulling his feet back down to earth. With his eyes closed, he felt the condensed moisture against his skin, pasting his black hair to his forehead and neck, almost choking him as he breathed deep again and then he stopped.

He gasped, having stopping short, and opened his eyes once again. Looking out he saw only a fish-eye view of endless stars, and then downward it was just the white blanket of cloud without a soul to be seen or heard.

It was a whole other world, drawn out in silver pen and black ink for night-time creatures with night-time eyes, coloured monochromatic and grey-scale for his sharp vision to catch every pinprick of light in the glittering mass of broken universe above. The moon loomed overhead, huge and magnificently bright and almost heartbreakingly beautiful as it illuminated the clouds below him, like polished marble with their seemingly infinite depth and eerie quality of life. Like a waterless ocean, the clouds below formed some silty, depthless carpet and he floated in the murk of it, in this earthly atmosphere, finally, truly, blessedly alone.

His hands, held out before him were white in this silvery light, the red of his shirt muted down to dark grey as if the colour had been drawn out of it. He turned on his back, moving slowly as though he might lose his balance, poised on nothing in midair.

Lying back, he looked up at the stars as if through freshly polished glass, so close and bright and clear they seemed. Absolutely exhilarated, he was for that moment completely in love with the night, and without trying and fathom the expanse of universe beyond, he would have stared forever in mute fascination.  

With nobody around, he was free from loneliness. In peace and so far from judgement, he felt safe and pure and whole. Floating, he imagined he was formless and even loved himself, imagining his weightless body as just another particle of space. He was not an evil thing, he was just a thing, and with nothing to call him by name he was content just to exist for a moment without articulate thought, without direction and without purpose, or cause, or boredom, or loneliness, or hunger.

Little thoughts eventually accumulated, ideas came and went. Hours of meditation had led him to the calm that inspired this trip upward, and he wasn’t going to ruin it now with petty musings. He opened his eyes and looked up at the endless universe, stretching his arms up as he floated with the whole world below him, and he thought to himself that reaching up like this, the entirety of all that existed was now before him, if not gathered in their common realm of civilization below. 

He stretched his hand a little further, as if genuinely trying to reach for it all, but without the desire to really physically go any higher, he settled back down and let his arms find their natural weight against his chest and just looked out into oblivion.

His purpose was simple. It wasn’t that he was made to destroy—even though he seemed to have an aptitude for it—he was a thing by which good things might compare themselves. He’d heard the old adage that without evil there would be no good, and for most of his life as a vagabond demon, he’d accepted the lazy position of being a marker of contrast; that from his little murders and tiny acts of wanton debauchery, those who would rise up and become true heroes would take a stand and firstly compare their love to his apathy.

Fionna would do this, eventually. Prince Bubba Gumball already had.

And yet even as he proclaimed himself the Apathetic Prince of Darkness, he couldn’t help but settle down into the fantasy, he couldn’t help but think as his whole soul reveled in this beauty of nothingness and stars and silver and cold, that the world would truly be a beautiful place if nothing at all had ever taken stock of its beauty and tried to claim it. For just this moment, being truly alone and far from anyone or anything that could perceive the serenity that smoothed his features, he imagined an unpopulated earth and ached.

Was it an evil thought? He told himself that he had no guilt for this private vision, and that his love of nature and natural beauty was still love, and so it couldn’t have come from the demon in him. He told himself that even as he imagined in incoherent ways how the earth might fall again to nature, that these thoughts came from this place of love, and so he dared to dream.

As soon as he became conscious of his thought, he woke as if from a deep sleep, the meditation completely broken. He hadn’t wanted to think about any of this, and now back in his own head and very much a part of the world he had left below, he felt more than a pang of guilt and thought of those people that he really did love. He told himself again that this ache of his was a part of his genetic makeup; that he had no choice and that it had nothing to do with them, that of course they would be exempt from the fantasy. It wasn’t really even a fantasy so much as the idle dreaming of a bored and passionless demon whose dominion over the mutated inhabitants of this bizarre landscape had been forfeited for nothing more than the unrequited love of a self-made deity in pink velvet.

He groaned. He knew. He understood what had transpired at the Candy Kingdom castle, but he had no desire to ponder it immersed in this dream-like landscape. He groaned again, turned a somersault and then spun rapid barrel rolls through a blast of cold air, but it wouldn’t clear his head. 

Gumball was an immortal creature. He created life with his hands. He had formed his own body from a sentient puddle of radio-active waste, guiding his own evolution over the course of a thousand years or less into a fully-functioning member of this society that knew more about science and nature than any demon in the Nightosphere: a man-shaped creature that could even love and dream.

Marshall was an immortal creature, too. He was an unnatural and natural predator of life: he killed, he ate people and felt guilty for it only when he was told to. When he thought he was thinking of nothing, he was in fact dreaming of the death of all intelligent life. When he thought about the people he loved most in the world, his mouth watered.

They were very different people.

And yet they were the same.

Marshall let himself descend, maybe ten feet, then stopped in the midst of cloud. Breathing the thick, moist air consciously, he tried to clear his mind but he was hasty. He thought of clearing his mind—he was conscious of the decision to do it—and his mind buzzed images of the past as he told himself that he was clear enough, when he knew that such clarity it would be impossible to achieve again tonight.

Nothingness. It would truly be bliss.

He looked up, took another deep breath and he rose once more. 

Gumball was an immortal. Marshall was an immortal. Two hundred years ago, things had been different but something had changed. Marshall knew loneliness now like he had never known it, and Gumball had a confidence like never before. And so the good would rise above evil, and The Prince would receive the glory he deserved while the demon wallowed in pity that by nature he was not capable of goodness, and that by choice he couldn’t allow himself to relish in evil.

Even simpler than all of that, the reason why they would never exist together was that they were too old for this; they knew themselves all too well, and knew each other. It was useless, it was folly, it was madness to think that a friendship—let alone love—could be fostered from this mess, and yet still, pretending to be a boy and not a demon, Marshall had gone to that castle window and stolen a kiss and made a promise that he couldn’t keep to be sweet and good and to try again to find that simple, bohemian happiness. Like a dream of childhood, it seemed like reliving the action of a past life; quaint and interesting but simply not possible as long as time still moved forward.  

It was hopeless. What would that promised happiness really be like? Did he really want an eternity of battling a hunger that shouldn’t, after all these years, still torture him? Did he want an eternity of humoring an immortal with mortal needs? That’s certainly not what Gumball wanted: Gumball would ache to build and to govern and to give himself to that which he had created—that was his nature. He would never be content to spend his nights pretending to accept the unacceptable waste of a nocturnal existence that with drive or purpose would only bring him and everything he loved to ruin.

As much as the fantasy of remaining close and happy like mortals did might seem deliciously simple and maybe even achievable and possibly even good—even for just one mortal lifetime—Marshall asked himself again what pleasure might be found in the journey of life with someone like Bubba, if love was truly a road to be taken and not a destination. Maybe it wasn’t just Bubba himself that didn’t quite fit the mold—maybe yearning for all this vast space had done something to Marshall’s brain, making him, despite his loneliness, unable to accept another’s love.

He asked himself if he really wanted to sit in front of a television and babble with another being instead of just doing it alone until the end of time like he had otherwise planned to. Or did he want to focus his energy on what he had an aptitude for—like he did—and actually do something with this immortality that was—after all his suffering—a gift, and not a curse?

He had wanted a project and that project would not be loving that boy. That boy wouldn’t allow it. That boy knew in his heart that no love could grow past budding sweetness in wistful glances and uncommon gentility. He hadn’t needed to be rejected—it’s been so much worse than that. Marshall had seen that look before: I love you, and it’s impossible.

Everything was temporary. What good would a little goodness be if destiny would truly prevail? If he felt these things now, these longings, these aches, even as he loved so much that would suffer for his purpose, what might happen when that love was replaced with something else—as was only bound to happen with time? Destiny called and it had nothing to do with anyone else, it had nothing to do with this realm or the next one, it had nothing to do with vampire hunger—a thing that seemed so petty and abstract in the scope of it all. 

This lifetime of loneliness; the past lifetime of adventure; the one before that in toxic give-and-take; and before that still, when he had felt a new and exhilarating love for something other than himself and the natural world—all of it, all of that had been a procrastination. The last—what? Four hundred years? Six, maybe, since he’d first become curious about this new Candy Kingdom and it’s mutants and their oddly provocative boy-King, all of it had been one big curious detour, one giant adolescent waste of time.

He tried to remember when it had been good; that brief period after war and before the rise of mutants when Marshall had still been on earth, before his respite in hell. He had gone home in that time, and known peace and family for the very first time in his life. That time had been good until new life had risen from a seemingly impossible circumstance—and he’d been sent back up on an errand to finish it.

They’d been so close, and then there had been the distractions and now the earth was populated again and whether or not it was good or evil commanding him, he had let it happen and now it was simply out of hand.

Marshall Lee, the King of Nothing At All, had been trying to be good like how a crisp white sheet with one drop of blood was still a white sheet; and he had been born a demon and would always be a demon, but for the love in his heart, his darkness was like how a dark room with one shaded candle burning could still be a dark room.

Marshall Lee, Panderer and Deceiver of Heroes and Gods was neither here nor there, not capable either way of anything pure so he had spun, unable to make a decision for a thousand years as to which direction he was truly meant to take. So much time wasted on denial. So much time wasted on not wanting anything; passive depression and lethargy in the guise of some kind of bohemian self-gratification. So much time wasted on aching, on waiting and on hoping—for what? Marshall Lee stopped in midair and faced the beautiful vacuum of space.

He couldn’t have taken a breath if he’d wanted to. His clothes had stiffened long ago with the frigid temperature, his hair formed into icicles. He looked up to the blackness that seemed to engulf him and made him felt so wonderfully infinitesimal, and then looked down, past his man-made canvas and rubber shoes to that shining silvery cloud blanketing a curved world that looked so beautifully small as well.

Being what he was, and who he was, he might not be able to light the damning fire, but he could certainly guide the match. He had his limitations, but time was no factor in what could be the greatest achievement of any single creature in the history of civilization. Forget his lost tribe of pathetic vampire followers, forget his mother’s will; he saw suddenly the potential for greatness, and finally, for peace. Looking down and thinking that he could do anything at all to shape this planet was a thrill that nearly matched the height at which he observed it, floating unencumbered at the end of the world.

No deep breath, no racing heart, no flush of panic, no signal at all of what was about to come. Marshall Lee closed his eyes, opened his arms and arched his back to curve. Then following the movement backward with cautiously tensed muscles, he slipped half-way down into a backward arc and deciding nothing, he fell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is getting a little darker than I had originally planned. Jeez, I really had no idea I would be taking this in this direction, but here we are. 
> 
> I'm sitting here, staring at my screen having just finished this and I'm asking myself, "He's not really evil, is he?" I really hope he turns out to be a good-guy, but then you never know. But, if we're going to go down that road, evil is a point of view, after all. Maybe this destruction comes from a place of love, maybe with destruction will come lush, green regrowth and the world will be a more beautiful place than it's ever been before. 
> 
> Please don't lock me up...I don't want to destroy the world.


	5. Reflected Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In almost every aspect of his life, Marshall has made his decisions based on gut feeling, but since his reunion with Gumball he's been running circles around his head trying to plan a future. Now he has a major decision (and possibly another rejection) over his head, and is conflicted between two possible realities, while losing sight of his original intentions in seeking out Prince Gumball in the first place. 
> 
> In this chapter, a conversation with Fionna might help point him in the right direction.

* * *

 

Marshall sat on his couch. He didn’t levitate. He didn’t play his guitar. He sat on his couch, with all the lights in the house off and stared at the black screen of the television that didn’t work.

The refrigerator would turn on for a while, then it would turn off and the house would settle into a heavy silence that seemed an entity all its own. He closed his eyes and drifted, but didn’t sleep. He didn’t care to sleep. He didn’t care if he was conscious or not, he simply stared at nothing and thought of nothing and ached inside but wouldn’t dare acknowledge it.

Ache. Ache for what? Anything. Love—feel something, hunger, maybe or cold or something like that, he wasn’t sure, just uncomfortable but—

And the refrigerator would turn back on and he’d listen to the hum like a heartbeat and imagine that he wasn’t all alone by choice in this house in a cave.

When the refrigerator turned off again, Marshall drew a breath only to sigh and came into himself just a little more and swore softly in the darkness.

Ache. Shouldn’t have acknowledged it.

He wrapped his thin arms around his thin stomach and leaned forward, forehead resting on his knees as he grit his teeth. Ache.

He thought about going up again, up into the clouds, about turning somersaults and backflips and barrel-rolling through the clouds up higher and higher. He wanted to see the clouds below him with the light of the moon above. He wanted to look for his own shadow in moonlight on clouds but he knew that if he went up there, he would look around and see everything and feel nothing as he thought too much. He wanted that feeling of epiphany again, but he wanted that passion to remain.

All those rambling thoughts. That feeling—tight in the chest—of coming upon a hard truth and then the trauma after and his fall had been so exhilarating and it had been without panic or fear and he had just fallen and it had been beautiful!

But for all of it, he didn’t know what to do. He ached.

He sat back on the couch and tried to relax his shoulders, tried to relax his arms, his legs, the tight muscles of his stomach. He sat there, stared forward, tried to lay his hands in a comfortably natural way on his legs—or off to the side on the couch, or in his lap—he tried to relax and think of nothing and regain at least the image of calm as he tried not to relive that epiphany in this dark and damp and art-deco, fake Formica linoleum, plush-carpet, corduroy-sofa and broken tube-tv hell. 

How could someone who didn’t breathe feel so dangerously close to hyperventilating? He felt claustrophobic in his own skin, but outside was outside, and he wanted absolutely nothing to do with the world.

 The fridge was on again. He must have been sitting there for hours. He could just barely make out the sounds of dripping rock outside, of the gentle lapping water against the underside of the dock on which his house sat, over the electronic whirl. Louder than that, was the sound of footsteps on wooden boards; a heavy step and a little click that could only have come from the hard sole of Fionna’s glossy little Mary-Janes.

Marshall squeezed his hands into fists and stared forward all the more intently, mind racing and going nowhere; he knew he couldn’t leave but the thought of seeing that round little face filled him with dread and guilt and shame and it made that ache turn his stomach inside out.

There was a knock at the door. The thought of getting up from his seat to answer it, to stand awkwardly at the door made him very nearly ill. To be with another person—a flesh-and-blood-person—and to realize just how much he did dread it made him question the entirety of his will not to go back to the Nightosphere and end all of this.

He let his head fall over the back of the couch and groaned aloud, knocked uncomfortably out of this precious time to himself: where passing time had meant nothing and neither did discomfort; time not to ponder or to contemplate or to plot or to worry, time where meditation happened or it didn’t, where thought happened or it didn’t, and no thought that sprouted could be punishable. 

To say that this time alone was important was an understatement. Now, with Fionna here, he would be forced to be the Marshall she knew—even if it only meant that he speak when he’d rather be silent. Now all this thought and confounding moral shit would tied up in that feeling he had felt when he’d felt nothing at all but the bliss of utter solitude in that beautiful grey-scale world lit up with borrowed light…

He groaned again. He needed to figure this out. He needed to know, he needed to reach inside himself into the very pit of everything he was and everything he loved and everything he hated about himself and discover the truth of what he wanted and what he could stand to endure for the rest of eternity. He needed to reach these truths, and now she was here and she was going to be sweet enough to make him want to forget he’d even gone up there in the first place.

When the door was pounded for the third time, Marshall said much too harshly that the door was unlocked, his voice like gravel in the back of his throat and raw-sounding from not being used.

Fionna opened the door and poked her head in, squinting in the light made only by kitchen appliances in the next room. With the door ajar, she let in the freshness of the night air and the mineral scent of stone and water from the cave and of course her own smell, which was a little bit like that treehouse that used to be home for Marshall: she smelled warm, but fresh and good.

“Uhh…” she stood in a square of white moonlight, let in from the open door, and off to the side, Marshall cleared his throat.

“Dude,” she said with that deepish female voice, “uh…dank much?”

Marshall said nothing to this innocent intruder. He didn’t want her to know how hopelessly wretched he felt, and that this dark, still air had meant the world to him. In this fragile state, her little comment made him feel ashamed.

She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her, standing in the dark with her small feet together and hands behind her back.

“What is it, Fionna?” he asked, softening his tone. He looked at her, but only because she couldn’t see him and a very small part of him—much smaller than the part that had wanted to be utterly alone until the end of time—ached in a very similar way to the feeling he had felt in the clouds, thinking of a wold lost and irretrievable.

His pain was only proof of his confliction, and the real pain of it was knowing that he was nowhere near ready to make any sort of decision at all regarding his life, let alone the fate of the world.

And who was he, really, to make such a decision? How had he ever felt like he could make a difference, even if he wanted to with all his black little heart?

He looked at this girl, this sweet, brave, intelligent—if not a little naive—girl who against the better judgement of all her friends and family and peers, trusted him enough to come here alone. 

Human. Quite possibly the very last human being in the whole world.

“I…I was worried about you,” she said, her voice crooning in its own feminine sort of way. Marshall smiled in the dark.

“Oh?” He asked, running his hands over his face, feeling his features, recognizing himself as the thousand-year-old boy she knew. “And why’s that?”

She seemed to hesitate. She was uncomfortable, which was unlike her.

“You uh—I mean the party. You left, I mean, I know you and Gumball had that talk but…” she cleared her throat. He heard her hand touch the metal doorknob. “Is this a bad time, Marshall?”

He sat back against the couch, let his head touch the headrest. He groaned, wanting to reach out and feel what he had felt so high above everything, free and cold. He rose a few inches from the couch and let his head fall back, the ends of his longish hair just touching the fabric of the couch.

“Marshall?”

“It’s as good a time as any, I suppose, why? Did you just want to hang out, then?”

She was quiet, her smell filling the small room.

The refrigerator clicked on again.

“Fionna?”

“It’s a bad time,” she stated, opening the door. She let in the light and the fresh air once again.

He looked up, willed himself to move—although it had seemed an impossibility before he’d seen her face—and moved into the light so that she could see him. She stopped before turning to go and looked up at him, looked him in the eye when he stood on the ground before her, bathed in the white moonlight reflected off the lake beyond.

“Fionna,” he said her name gently. He had scared her, and for all his yearning, he had never been particularly mean-spirited. It hurt him to see his friend turn away in fear.

He apologized quietly, but Fionna gave her head a little shake, the ears of her bunny-hat flopping a little as she did. The summer air retained some heat from the day, but the breeze off the water was cool and as she stood there looking at him, maybe trying to read him, goosebumps rose on the backs of her arms, and on the little half circle of flesh just below her collarbone that was exposed by the modest neckline of her quarter-length t-shirt.

If she wasn’t the only human being in the world, and if she wouldn’t have misread the gesture, he would have touched that skin with his fingertips—just lightly—just to feel that specific sensation of human flesh and human warmth.

She swallowed nothing as he watched and then she did turn and he reached out without thinking, and held her arm.

“Fionna,” when he said her name again it commanded attention, and she stopped short, but took her arm from his grip and turned on him, frown etched deep in her forehead.

“Don’t look at me that way,” she said. She stared at him, waiting for his defense while he waited for her to say more; she could have said so much more then, but she didn’t.

“I’m sorry,” he was sorry.

“I’m just trying to be nice and you’re creeping on me?”

The words hurt more than they should have.

“I was away in my head just then,” he managed to say. “I’m sorry, Fionna, I really am: that wasn’t about you so much as it was about my own pathetic…please, just…please come keep me company.”

“Whoa, buddy,” Fionna took a step back from him and looked at him in the light. She had to have seen his sincerity. She frowned, looking him over, and then leaning her weight on one hip she slung the backpack off her shoulder and around to her front, pulling out a great wad of thick red fabric and draping it over her arm.

He stared at her, watching this.

“If you really want to hang out, first I’m gonna change,” she said, “into my jammie-jams. And then you n’ me…” and from the depths of her backpack, she pulled out a seemingly impossibly large chunk of ancient technology and handed it to him.

“How did you—”

“Magic,” she said. It was a VCR. “We’re gonna watch a movie.”

He stepped aside to let her through the door, flinching just slightly when she turned on the overhead light. He simply watched—shocked out his stupor and then back into one—intrigued as she kicked off those tiny shoes and climbed the stairs to his bedroom to change.

               

* * *

 

It wasn’t so uncommon for Fionna to drop by without Cake at her side, but even if he had nothing to feel guilty about, Marshall couldn’t help but worry that the mutant cat would barge in at any moment and accuse him of something.

Now so far removed from where he had been even just an hour ago, Marshall tried to forget it and tried—for Fionna’s sake—just to sit and enjoy her company and the film she’d chosen for the evening. He was counting on her falling asleep or going home in just a few short hours, and then he would have until dawn to sort out the churning in his stomach and figure out which side of him would prevail over the other tonight—Marshall Lee the Demon Prince; or Marshall Lee the outcast King of the Vampires.

The movie was something predictable, epic, dramatic, and bloody: not bad. Post-war—of course—so most of the actors were made of food, but Fionna didn’t seem to mind or care; this was her world and she had never known such a thing as an earth peopled by humans and humans alone. For Marshall, she seemed almost like the heart of morality to this bizarre fairy-tale; the human princess amidst all this magic, happily unaware how extraordinary her world really was.

He found himself quietly sobered, no longer passing this time hoping for an opportunity to further ponder the unhappy dichotomy of his half-demon heart. He wasn’t in the clouds anymore, but in a sense he felt that same mysterious falling away of all those titles the world had heaped on his shoulders, and sitting here with Fionna now just watching television, he was Marshall Lee and nothing more.  

Occasionally, Marshall would reach blindly in the glow of the television screen, pick out a strawberry from the bowl on the side table and with the flesh of the fruit pressed against a sharp tooth, he’d take the colour and pass the pale remains onto the human, who eagerly gnashed that white flesh between her flat, herbivore teeth without a second thought.

While he savoured that rich, pleasantly bitter flavour against the roof of his mouth, she told him that the fruit itself tasted the same without the colour—just so long as she didn’t look at it.

“Can I ask what happened?” She said, not taking her eyes off the television. White and blue light reflected off her light-coloured skin, eyes shining in the dark with her knees drawn up to her chest, covered head-to-toe in red flannel and those adorably ridiculous costume ears.

He licked the last bitter-sweet berry juice from his lips and looked at the screen as well, leaning his weight against the opposite arm-rest of the couch they shared.

“You mean the other night,” he stated.

She hummed.

Marshall shook his head, even though she wasn’t looking at him. He didn’t know if he was ready for this conversation, he didn’t know if he was ready for any conversation at all. He was exhausted of thinking, but pushing it away would only lead to restless laziness. Maybe articulating this tiny part of it all would put it into perspective.

“I’ve known Gumball for a long time, Fionna,” he said finally. He didn’t look at her when he spoke, but sensed she was listening intently to a kind of serious conversation they’d never really had before. “Things have never been easy between us.”

She didn’t say anything for what seemed like a very long time. When he did glance at her, she appeared to be smiling at something that had happened in the film, so he turned back to it but had lost track of the plot.

“I know he’s old,” she said suddenly, but not without an appropriately low tone of voice. “I had this vision, once,” she continued as she watched. “I was visited by a past version of myself—a boy. And this boy knew PG when the Candy Kingdom was just…you know, sheet-cake and crumb coat.” He heard her throat close and when she turned to look at him, their eyes met before he glanced away. He felt heavy like he always did when the subject of time came to play, especially in the company of mortal people.

“Yeah,” he said, only because he felt obligated to speak, “I knew him then too.”

“He really did build all of it, didn’t he: I mean, the candy-people…?”

“Fionna…” he was at a loss, not at liberty to share these things with her without Bubba’s consent. He shook his head and met her wide eyes again.

She nodded and looked down at her hands, held at her breast and between her drawn knees.

“Do you…” she shook her head and apologized.

Marshall sighed and leaned with his arm against the back of the couch, his elbow against the wall, head cradled in his own palm. He didn’t want to talk about things like eternity with her. He didn’t want her to ever understand what it was like to have to live forever, just as he shuddered to think of the rise and fall of every mortal ever born since he himself had first come into the world. 

But he knew that wasn’t what was on her mind now, anyway.

“I love him,” he said simply. She looked at him sharply, eyes wide and he gave a little shrug, dared to smile even for her. “I’ve loved him for a long time.”

“And you told him!” She gasped. “The other night! I knew it!”

Marshall laughed gently, maybe relieved but not really knowing what he might have expected her reaction to be. He hadn’t planned for a second of this conversation, but he supposed that he was relieved that she hadn’t been disappointed.

“No, you dork.” He smiled for her as she smiled with him. “He’s known for a long time—there’s history between us, that’s why it’s difficult now,” he said it as simply as if he were talking about the weather and something in him quickened to hear the words come out of his mouth. He replayed them, and the ones before and found that they were astonishingly true.

“You…” she looked at him with a whole new light, “and him?”

He gave another little shrug as she turned her body, placing her socked feet on the couch between them. He could feel the warm press of her toes against the side of his leg.

“I can’t wait to tell Cake,” she said quickly, “can I tell Cake?”

“Please don’t tell anyone, Fionna!” Marshall gasped. He looked her in the eyes and unbelievably, he laughed, feeling very nearly giddy if not totally terrified that he had made a mistake in confiding in her. Where had the confession even come from? He’d never withheld the information with the intention of being secretive, but he didn’t know how to make it clear that this couldn’t leave the room without making it seem like he was ashamed of something.

She punched his arm and laughed again. “Oh come on, Marshall, Cake will finally lay off—”

“Well, I’m not exactly taken,” Marshall said with a tone that suggested it was only a lamentable turn of unfortunate events. He ran his hand back over his hair and glanced to the flickering screen. “Nothing has changed, and that’s the way it ought to stay, Fionna—he has responsibilities,” he said this without the slightest touch of sarcasm. “I’m completely serious,” he assured her, meeting her eyes again, “nothing has changed.”

“She can keep a secret,” Fionna insisted. She reached out, placing her warm hand on Marshall’s arm, and again through his clothing he could feel the human warmth of her skin which was painful to him in such a unique way—especially now.

He was a little taken aback by her insisting, thought it beneath her if not even a little childish. When he simply looked at her, she flushed pink in the face and cleared her throat, breaking the eye contact and sitting back against the opposite arm of the couch.

“I just…of course I won’t say anything if you don’t want me to, I was just thinking, I guess that she’d finally keep her trap shut about me hanging out with you,” she shrugged and crossed her arms over her chest.

Marshall understood.

“I’m not gay, Fionna,” he said gently, waiting for the inevitable blush, waiting for the confusion which came and went more quickly than it had with Gumball when they’d had this same conversation years and years and years before.

“And even if I was,” Marshall continued, “she would still worry about you hanging out with me, and of course, that worry would be completely legitimate.”

Fionna frowned again. “Marshall,” she said his name slowly, as if he needed drawing back into the world but he hadn’t drifted; he wasn’t dreaming, he wasn’t caught in some fantasy—the words had not been a threat, just a simple and honest truth.

“You’re human,” he said, “and maybe one of the last humans in the world. She’s right to worry that I might feel something for you, but even if she was led to believe that I’m exclusively sexually attracted to males, she would be right—I’m not sexually attracted to anyone.”

He heard her heart beat quicken and stood up from the couch almost as if that quickening was a command to put distance between them. She watched him get up, stared at him as he stood some feet away from where she still sat.

“Big whop,” she said, but she said it weakly, “you’re a vampire. That’s not a secret. Even Gumball knows it like yeah—you’re a predator. We know you eat the candy-people if they go outside the kingdom walls at night.”

“And you’re not afraid of me?” He asked, feeling a little cheap in asking it so forthrightly.

“I’m not a candy-person.”

“You’re so much more than that, Fionna—”

“You don’t have to be so abrasive,” she said sharply, “you know, we can talk about stuff without you having to remind me that you’re some monster. I get it, Marshall, I know you’re a monster, alright? But you’re trying and I get that too. I mean, not every guy from the Nightosphere could just sit with a mortal and watch a movie, but come on, bro! Just trust me that I can handle at least this side of you; no matter how conflicted you are about whatever’s on your mind, I know you’re not gonna kill me.”

Marshall tried to absorb what she’d said and take it at face value. He tried not to overthink. He tried to understand on an intuitive level like he always had before he’d met Bubba Gumball and he nodded and sat back down.

“You don’t give us enough credit,” Fionna continued, sitting beside him. “I fight monsters all the time, so I appreciate it that even just sometimes, you’re trying not to wreck the place up. I guess if any of those baddies out there stopped and said, hey man, I’m sorry, it’s just a bad day, wanna hang out? I’d hang out before I decided if he really deserved a butt-kicking. Besides—other than eating candy-people—I haven’t ever heard of you doing anything all that evil. Who are you trying to convince?”    

Ah, it was so much more than that but she had the heart of it, didn’t she? Trying to convince himself he was good enough to deserve happiness and trying to convince them that he was too evil for their love. How could he be both and yet neither? 

“You’re an amazing creature,” he said to her, “you don’t even know the half of it.”

She smiled. “I’m your friend, Marshall. You’re supposed to feel that way about your friends.”

The silence was uncomfortable.

“So you wanna eat me,” she said, drawing her knees back up to her chest. “Strawberry-me.”

He reached, smiling despite himself and took a strawberry without tasting it and gave it to her.

“What about him?” She asked, chewing. “You just dropped a pretty big bomb, there. You don’t think he’s sexy? Not even a little bit?”

Marshall shook his head, feeling just a little of that longing to be alone return.

“I had this conversation with him maybe two hundred years ago,” he said, looking at his hands so that he didn’t have to see that heart-wrenching fascination on her face. “And when I told him that I was in love with him, he immediately expected that to translate to passion.” Fionna went still and he resisted the urge to look at her. “But what he didn’t understand and what Cake doesn’t understand is that for me, passion is something very different. For me, passion isn’t sexual in nature. I am a thing made to destroy and any passion I feel is hunger. I can fall in love, and I can fall hard but at the end of the night when it’s just him and me and he’s looking at me like you’d expect anyone who loves you to look at you…all I can think about is sinking my teeth into him and—”

“Marshall,” he looked up at the sound of her voice and she was flushed again, and shaking her head. “I get it.”

He cleared his throat and nodded.

“I’m a thing designed to destroy. There is no procreation for me, there is no sexual lust for me, it’s all just this hunger. So when Cake thinks that I’m out to kidnap young virgins—”

“Marshall!”

“Sorry,” he cleared his throat again. “Anyway. There were times when it was really good between us, when we were friends and we could sit here like…like this. I love him, I would do anything for him and I do love him romantically, but as soon as the idea that we’re in love with each other comes up it’s like someone turns on some kind of filter over everything and it’s suddenly so unfair to have to be with someone you can never get close to.”

“He wants you, and you want him too—but in very different ways,” she said, sounding a little weak.

He tried not to feel embarrassed, he tried not to feel sorry: she did, after all, ask for this conversation.

“I mean…isn’t there…some kind of…compromise?”

He looked at her and she was scarlet and the smell of her was filling up the room with heat.

He ran his hand over his face and she fidgeted, cleared her throat.

“Compromise?”

She hummed.

“What sort of compromise?”

“Don’t make me say it, Marshall!” She cried, then cleared her throat and put her feet flat on the floor. She stared at the television, then crossed her legs while he watched her, smiling lightly in disbelief.

“Where did you learn a thing like that?” He asked her, his gentle tone just bordering on playful.

She cast him a pleading look to just drop it and he smiled despite himself.

“I have fangs,” he said, but instantly regretted bringing up the image it had to conjure for her. 

She shook her head. “I didn’t necessarily mean that,” she said in a rush, “but, your situation isn’t hopeless.”

“It is when you’re the one who ends up eating everyone you’ve ever loved,” Marshall said maybe a hair too dismissively. “Besides, this was a very long time ago. We’ve had a long time to come up with ideas, and trust me: a compromise isn’t something that suits either of us. And not just me, not just my hungry little black heart; I can be with him physically if he wants me to, but he knows that I don’t want it and he knows what I do want through it all.”

“That would be a little disconcerting,” Fionna muttered.

“Gumball needs someone he can count on, someone who will be there when he needs them to be—day or night—or he needs something almost exactly the opposite and if it’s going to be casual, it has to have that instantly gratifying physical component that our relationship never had. It’s not like we could continue with being romantic friends—either exclusive to each other, or more casually—not with how his kingdom is shaping up.”

Fionna’s blush had faded and she stared at the floor now, nodding. “It sounds like you’re telling yourself these things,” she said.

“Maybe I am,” Marshall agreed, admitting that she was probably right. When was the last time he’d ever candidly talked about Gumball with someone besides Gumball himself? Prismo hadn’t had any advice besides that compromise. “Maybe it’s what I need to hear.”

“I think if you love him, you should try to make it work,” Fionna said simply, lowering her voice.

“I am,” Marshall said, but stopped short. Was he? Had he decided something just then, without mulling it over, without hours of excruciating soul searching? “But…” he shook his head.

“But what?”

“I…” he hesitated, “it’s very difficult to explain, I guess I am trying to make it work. I took a step in the right direction—maybe. But since then, I dunno, I’ve been…”

“Conflicted?”

He sighed. “To put it simply, yes.”

“I’m not going to ask why,” she said, leaning on her elbow as she looked him over. She sighed. “It’s gonna be some big good-and-evil, creator-vs-destroyer thing and I don’t wanna hear it because you’re my friend and I hate to hear you talk about yourself like you’re evil, because you’re not.”

He took a breath to speak but she cut him off.

“What do you want, Marshall?”

“Pardon?”

“Right now. If you could have anything at all right now. I mean, anything. I mean, if you could end your banishment or…or go to the other side of the world and forget about us, or if you could drink my blood right here and kill me without any consequence—”

“Fionna!”

“I mean anything! If you could have anything at all, what would it be?”

He hesitated, completely taken aback. He stared at her.

“Marshall,” she said, very seriously. “Cake does this to me sometimes. Look at me. Don’t think. Answer the question.”

She turned her body again, facing him with her legs crossed between them. He half turned his body, feeling oddly light and heavy at the same time. He nodded.

“Marshall, what do you want?”

“I want to be with him.”

 


	6. Peace Offering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gumball finally makes it over to Marshall's cave house as he promised he would. 
> 
> Part one of two in Gumball's perspective.

* * *

Prince Gumball couldn’t think. He was past thinking, past deliberating. It had been more than thirty-six hours since his party and he couldn’t sleep or eat or do anything but think about Marshall Lee.

A moment too late, he had remembered those good times with him, times were they had laid awake—or when Gumball had laid awake—all night long and stared at the stars or even just the underside of the canopy on his own bed and oblivious to everything and everyone in the world, they had talked for hours.

It had been those simple times; sitting on the floor listening to records, talking about the past and talking about the future, staying up and watching movies and playing videogames. Those times when Gumball had fallen asleep against Marshall’s shoulder had been the happiest times of his life.

And after all of it, of all the blame and accusation and fear from him it had been the vampire who had come forward to say he was unhappy, to ask so earnestly for a second chance at love and it had been Gumball who couldn’t look him in the eye and tell him that it was impossible.

He didn’t care if it was impossible. He didn’t care about what he had built and what Marshall was. He didn’t care about the past, he didn’t care about how when this sweet sentiment boiled down, he may very well be left with some bitter truth tied to irrepressible destiny—that didn’t matter, not now. He ached in a way that he hadn’t ached in years, and more than loneliness or lust he wanted _Marshall_ and everything that a relationship with Marshall implied.

Well past midnight on the night since their long conversation, Gumball knew he wouldn’t last another day and night in agonizing silence: his nerves couldn’t handle it so with his stomach churning in anxiety and his hands shaking from lack of sleep or low blood-sugar, or both, he summoned Peppermint Maid to his room and told her he was taking leave, despite the hour.

“Please,” he said to her, kneeling down to her eye-level. “I’ll be back in a few hours, but nobody can know that I’m gone. Act as my steward in the case of an emergency.”

Peppermint Maid had been with him very nearly since the beginning of all this, and if anyone in Ooo could guess why he had been so cold to Marshall this past decade, it would be her.

She nodded and her whole body moved with the mimicked gesture that in no way looked natural. She had rarely spoken of the subject of Gumball’s personal relationship with Marshall Lee, and he knew that he could trust her with this secret when he had trusted her with so much else already.

“And no magic, please,” he added, standing. He knew the affinity she had for such things, and while despite the potential danger, he had mostly turned a blind eye to it in the past—like she had with Marshall—it sometimes worried him to leave her alone with the less-intelligent citizens of the Candy Kingdom. “I’d rather you come fetch me than use magic in any situation in my absence.”

“Of course, Sir,” she said, curtseying this time instead of making a bow.

“Very well,” he sighed, shrugging off his jacket and laying it on the bed. He made his way to his closet, changing into something a little more casual. He saw that t-shirt folded still at his bedside and wondered with a wave of nausea if Marshall had noticed it there. He considered for half a second wearing it under some sweater, but the thought of it being discovered sent another wave of nauseating mortification through him.

Not to mention the mortification at the thought of removing any clothing tonight. Hadn’t they just had this conversation? Whatever this was meant to be, it wasn’t going to be like last time.

He took a deep breath and dismissed peppermint maid, then opening his closet he found almost every article of clothing that he owned was pink or purple or some other cotton-candy shade of something the vampire was sure to find nauseating.

He did own a pair of jeans and slipped them on after neglecting them for years. Unused to formfitting trousers, he fidgeted to find a comfortable fit, but resigned to just get used to it and threw on a neutral pink shirt and a deliciously magenta cardigan with little peppermint buttons. He thought about keeping the oxfords, and while they made a nice statement with the dark jeans, he reminded himself that he was going to a cave and decided to change those too. A pair of espadrilles caught his eye—thinking he could roll the cuff of the jeans for something appropriately “summer” that he hadn’t he opportunity to try and pull off in a while—but then heard Marshall’s voice in his head and grabbed the canvas basketball sneakers even though they were horribly predictable.

“What am I doing?” He muttered to himself, tying the laces quickly. He called his faithful hawk to his window. For all the reasons he needed to speak to him, he hoped that Marshall wouldn’t be paying attention to his shoes.

 

* * *

 

Marshall Lee’s cave was not very far at all from the Candy Kingdom—especially on the back of a hawk. Used to the height, he trusted his bird friend and looked forward as he rode, sitting on the animal’s shoulders as its massive wings carried them south-west with Fionna’s tree-house in view to the east. He remembered many a night spent in that tree-house, before Marshall Lee had left Ooo, but it was just as well that he was going to this little cave house now instead.

Approaching the caves, he slowed the bird and asked to be let off some distance away, so that he might walk up on his own without the royal entry. The bird left him to his business, and it gave Prince Gumball great relief to be on the ground again, walking in these flat-soled shoes on the dewy grass of the field.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and tried for a moment to just enjoy the peaceful freshness of the night-time air. The night was overcast, but clouded sparsely enough to offer a decent amount of moonlight to walk by.

The Prince spread his arms and took a deep breath of sweet air. This walk was something of a limbo: someplace between the uncertain anxiety behind and the unknown ahead, and so he decided that even though his hands trembled and his heart raced, he would try to at least enjoy the fresh air, before facing his old friend for what he hoped would be either the last word on this subject, or the first encounter of many to come.

He took a deep breath to sigh, but the breath caught in his throat, hitched on the sound of a scream that rang out loud and long and piercing through the night to crystalize the sugar in his veins.

Bolting at a sprint to the direction of the caves, his mind raced to think of the implications: he knew that scream, but the sight of something red in the corner of his vision directed his attention upward, where he saw falling from the sky what could only be the source of that hideous noise. He stopped in his tracks, helpless.

He swore, then ran again toward where she would land when she fell, although he knew that even if he could somehow make it in time, there would be no breaking her fall to save her life. He could only run, chest tight and heart pounding as his hands went cold and then numb with fear. He choked on his breath, watching her fall faster and then above he saw a darker figure—the one who had to be responsible for this—follow at a dive-bomb accelerated by supernatural ability.

Again, Gumball stopped to watch, stopped to catch his breath and squinting to make out the shape of the two, he saw Marshall swoop down with perhaps only feet to spare and scoop the girl up, then ascend again almost immediately with a speed that nearly matched the fall.

The scream became something more like hooting exhilaration, maybe something like deranged laughter and he watched Marshall in his human-looking form carry the girl up and up and up until he could barely see the speck of her red pyjamas above. There was an agonizing moment of seeming stillness, of tension while Gumball’s heart skipped over itself in fear and confusion and something sickeningly close to jealousy—even as he still feared for the girl’s life—and then again came the scream and again she fell.

Marshall followed more closely this time, barrelling down after her and as Gumball’s feet seemed to carry him toward the scene against his will, he saw the vampire take hold of her to slow the fall just enough to wrap his arms around her without hurting her. He carried her up some distance again and all but threw her high in the air as she screamed and laughed and trusted this demon prince completely to catch her.

Of course he did, rising up to meet her in the air so her impact with those cold, bony arms wouldn’t bruise her human ribs, but Bubba Gumball was close enough that those vampire eyes could have easily spotted his pink colour in the grass below, and it seemed like they just had.

Gumball’s first instinct was to react furiously as they descended more slowly, to cite the endless line of dangers and risks involved with this childish game. He all but marched up to the both of them while they laughed in that irrepressible way that laughter can continue on while adrenaline slowly leaves the bloodstream, and waited for either of them to speak before he launched his attack.

“Hey PG,” Fionna said, standing unsteadily on solid ground only when Marshall himself landed on two feet. He had held her like a bride, both her legs swung up under his arm with her arms around his neck, and he seemed almost comically thin with this robust girl in his grasp, although it was plain to see that he didn’t struggle to bend and guide her small, bare feet to the grass as he gently let her go.

“Hey PG,” Marshall echoed, rising up again just as soon as Fionna was safe on the ground.

Gumball watched him sail lazily overhead. “What the hell was that?”

“Ooh, such language in front of a lady,” Marshall crooned. “I should be insulted that you use the name of _my_ kingdom—”

“Can it, Marshall, she could have died,” Gumball said just exactly as he would have said it two weeks ago, before the first conversation in his bedroom, before the kiss at his window. He thought to himself that he was only responding in kind to Marshall’s own attitude.

“She’s fine,” Marshall said, voice rising to accentuate his annoyance, even as Fionna bent in the grass and emptied the contents of her stomach. “She loves it.” He watched her retching sickness and smiled lightly, landing on the ground and still standing taller than the Prince, which seemed in its own absurd way some kind of threat.      

And then Marshall sighed, running his hand through his dark hair and reached for the girl, who struggled to stand upright but laughed still.

“That was awesome,” she said, then groaned and caught the arm that Marshall extended for her.

He told her gently that it was time to pack her things and head home, glancing to Gumball as he did, making fleeting eye contact to suggest that he maybe follow them to the mouth of the cave and Marshall’s home.

“What were you thinking?” he asked whichever of them would answer, unable to help himself.

“Don’t be mad,” Fionna said, laughing uneasily. “I just said it had been such a long time since Marshall had taken me flying…I dunno…”

“He takes you flying?” Gumball heard the words he spoke before he decided to say them, and it was Marshall who responded as he led them both down the grassy slope to the cave.

“Occasionally,” he said, looking at the girl as he spoke, not at Gumball. Gumball watched as Marshall laid his long-fingered hand on Fionna’s shoulder. “I admit, I was the one who put the idea in her head: I told her what it feels like, to fly…like controlled falling—weightless.”

“It didn’t look very _controlled_ to—”

“Dude,” Fionna drew out the word, laughing low, cutting Gumball off. “Aw man, I’m gonna sleep like a rock.”

“You _fly_ like a rock,” Marshall teased, giving her a little shove, but just playfully since she was still dizzy from the fall.

“Hey man, that’s how humans fly,” she said, smiling and sighing and exhausted.

Gumball didn’t know what to feel. Until this very moment he’d imagined Fionna as something of a novelty in the eyes of Marshall Lee: a quaint little tchotchke brought down from the shelf of memory, and never once had he ever experienced any feelings of jealousy for her.

She might have died tonight, yet still she sighed and allowed the vampire to hold her arm and steady her. She sighed and smiled, and seeing it and hating that it was so easy for her made Gumball feel dirty; infected with both jealousy and shame.

Coming now into the shadow of the cave where that little cottage appeared to float, Price Gumball was suddenly terribly self-conscious, wondering if maybe Marshall could sense this jealousy boiling beyond his control. Marshall had always called him _mutant_ , and he had never really understood and although perhaps this change or focus in perspective had been a long time coming, he realized no sooner than that very moment what it was that Marshall had always expected the Prince to be.

Mutant. Mutated version of humanity; that’s what Marshall had always said, right? Made of sugar, unlike this girl that was an animal—her limbs the fleshy meat of muscle and her hair like coarse fur. Just like Marshall himself…only alive.

 She even smelled like an animal—not like strawberry, not like vanilla or orange-crème.  Is that what Marshall liked, that savoury animal stink?

Infected with jealousy and shame.

But they were there at the house now and Marshall and Fionna had been talking lightly with each other in such a way that Gumball was intended to overhear, in a way they never would have talked to each other amongst themselves but only for Gumball so that he might think their fun just innocent enough to accept.

He gave the requisite nod. He sighed, although not for their behaviour, but for his own rotten heart that was so wretchedly self-obsessed even as he gave Fionna another little disparaging look so that she might think he seriously cared about her well-being.

What was he thinking? Of course he did.

But if Marshall really did care for her as well, she had never been in any danger.  

“Do you want me to call Cake?” Marshall was asking her. “Have her come pick you up?”

Fionna waved away the suggestion, slipping on her backpack as she stood just inside the threshold of Marshall’s living room. She slipped on her glossy black shoes, negotiating with the strap to slip it over the top of her foot without actually having to unhook the little buckle, then stood ready to go, still happily clad in onesie-pyjamas and smiling tiredly.

“I have my retractable sword,” she said simply. “ ‘sides, a walk will do me good.”

Gumball would have forbidden an unescorted walk home at this time of night, but he told himself bitterly that she was not his guest and this was not his home. Marshall accepted this as simply as she’d said it and with a punch on the shoulder from the girl, he sent her on her way.

To Gumball, he merely gestured that he might enter the tiny cottage of a home and stepped outside with Fionna on the little dock just outside, gently closing the door behind him and closing Gumball off from them both in a gesture that was neither explicitly rude nor exceptionally polite.

Alone, Gumball sighed and shook his head, taking stock of the room which featured not much more than a television set up to face a sofa which was pushed up against the back wall. For décor, there was a scattering of clothes—shoes in a heap by the door, sweaters, jackets and button-down shirts in neutral shades of gray heaped at the side of the sofa as if they had aspirations of being laid out on the arm. Other than that, there was only a pot of dirt in the corner but the plant that had been intended to live there had either died of neglect, or had never ended up being planted at all.

The carpet was dirty but only with mud and didn’t smell musky or sour or anything offensive which might indicate that some living animal inhabited this place, even if all the appliances in the kitchen were plugged in and giving off their faint light and whirl.

There was a half-eaten punnet of strawberries on one side of the sofa, and on the arm of the other were their stems—laid out on the fabric of the sofa itself, but neatly, in a line. He imagined, with a little flush, the vampire and the girl snacking together. A curious wave of emotion overcame him, remembering having laughed at the suggestion of finishing off that wasted fruit himself. Of course Fionna wouldn’t have even batted an eyelash at it, after all, why not?  

Gumball sighed and went to pick these up. His back was turned to the door when it opened and closed again and he felt his heart sink with dread. The bit of fruit that clung still to the leaves and stems was cold, vaguely slimy, but he picked them up one by one and took the handful of them into the kitchen, imagining those vampire eyes watching him every step of the way.

He stopped himself before commenting on the mess, just to have something to say. He found that the kitchen was immaculately clean, and not necessarily from lack of use.

Those eyes from across the room could have burned a hole in his back, so as slowly as he could manage without seeming odd about it, he bent to put the strawberry tops in a little covered bin that was under the sink and rose to finally look at Marshall through the half-wall of the kitchen.

Marshall was taking off his shoes and not looking at Gumball at all, and the Prince realized with a shock of embarrassment that he hadn’t even bothered to take off his own shoes. Shaking his head at himself, he slipped them off where he stood on the linoleum and held the pair of them in two fingers like the gills of a fish.  

“I wasn’t thinking,” he said quickly, deciding finally to just leave the shoes against the kitchen wall.

Marshall said nothing. He gave a little shrug but seemed to hold back from saying something negative as well.

Imagining all that he could have said, Gumball was grateful for his restraint, but it didn’t do much to ease his self-consciousness, especially with the way Marshall had just shaken that overgrown hair out of his eyes and looked right at him. Gumball looked away.

“It was foolish,” Marshall said finally.

Gumball’s heart all but leapt through his chest and looked up again. “I’m sorry…it’s not because of the mess, or—”

“No,” Marshall said firmly. He shook his head, frowning as he met Gumball’s eye again through the half-wall partition. He motioned over his shoulder then shoved his hands in his pockets. “I mean outside. With Fionna. It was reckless.”

Gumball didn’t quite know what to say, he opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Now given the opportunity, he didn’t want to immediately agree with Marshall to tell him that he had been in the wrong. When he thought of all that he could say about their recklessness, he came again to the thought that Marshall would never let harm come to someone he truly cared about.

“You um,” he shrugged, trying to make it seem like he’d already forgotten the issue. He looked at his palm, rubbed at a bit of sticky strawberry residue. “You love her, I guess. You wouldn’t have let her fall.”

Marshall nodded. “I wouldn’t have,” he agreed, “but still. I’m not infallible.”

It was something of a truce, and Gumball accepted it. He came around into the carpeted living area and stood, leaning against the wall and trying to look casual.

“Sit,” Marshall motioned to the sofa. “I’ll make you some tea.”

“You have tea?” Gumball asked, stepping away from the wall to stand somewhat awkwardly in the centre of the larger room, mostly so that when Marshall passed him, he didn’t have to do it quite as closely as he would have if he’d remained in the archway.

He came close enough for Gumball to detect the smell of ozone on his clothes. With the sent to fill his head with images of sailing through the cloudy night sky, Gumball caught himself watching the boy walk away from him and wondered how he really did spend all that spare time, and what it must be like to truly be so free.

“I have tea,” Marshall stated flatly, although not unpleasantly.

Gumball took the seat offered to him and watched the vampire go about looking in cupboards and drawing out cup, spoon, sugar. He filled a kettle with water from the tap and set it on the electric stove.

Gumball felt a little guilty for being so intrigued by this; it wasn’t as if Marshall had lived a thousand years and not thought one wit about making a cup of tea: alive or not, making tea was one of the more basic skills of life. It was, after all, Marshall Lee who had introduced the Candy Prince to the idea of drinking hot, flavoured water—a feat which Gumball was uniquely capable of in the Candy Kingdom. The candy-people would only melt from the inside out to attempt it, but Gumball’s sugar-structure was a little more stable than that.   

“I’m afraid I don’t have cream,” Marshall said, running his hand back through his hair, “but I have powered whitener. It’s vanilla, I think. Or French Vanilla…I don’t know if there’s a difference.”

Gumball nodded when he was looked at, smiled on command. “I’m sure it’s fine.”

Marshall nodded and took this out as well, then remained standing a comfortable distance away in the kitchen while he waited for the water to boil. Was it obvious that Gumball had been watching him?

The Candy Prince looked at his hands which gripped his denim-clad knees and resisted the urge to pick his fingernails lest Marshall notice the preening. The jeans were comfortable now; he’d even forgotten that he’d somewhat frantically chosen an outfit for this evening, feeling almost wretchedly foppish to think of it it now that he was actually here in this little house with Marshall. None of that mattered right now, not at all.  

 “I started tonight thinking that I wanted to be alone,” Marshall said.

Gumball looked up at him, watched him watch the kettle. “Oh?”

Marshall blinked slowly. “Yeah,” he bit a lip and shook his head, appearing to roll his eyes at himself or at the situation they were now in, Gumball wasn’t sure. “And then Fionna came along and said she wanted to watch a movie. Trucked that damned VCR all the way down there…” he flashed dark eyes on Gumball.

“One thing led to another?” Gumball asked, smiling faintly.

Marshall nodded, sharing the little smile. “Yes it did.” He shook his head. “I’m wretched.”

“She seemed to think it was a grand adventure,” Gumball said gently. He repeated his earlier words, but this time they came out with more conviction. “You wouldn’t have let anything happen to her.”

Marshall hummed. “Yes, well my reasons for doing it weren’t entirely selfless, either. That girl is too trusting.”

Gumball waited patiently for what Marshall really wanted to say, but Marshall wasn’t going to say anything else. His palms felt sweaty.

“You don’t mean the uh…the catch and release…”

Marshall laughed and then groaned. “I don’t know,” he said. He ran his hand over his face and shook his head yet again. “I just…” he sighed heavily despite not needing the breath. “You know the old story. Sometimes it’s difficult...for me…”  

The silence that followed felt heavy and Gumball realized rather suddenly that he had interrupted something perhaps far more than just a little game. He had interrupted something that maybe had very little to do with Fionna at all. Marshall had just admitted Fionna herself had come unannounced, that her welcome had been tentative.

“Marshall, if you want to be alone, I can go,” the prince said with all the sincerity he could muster. “Really, I didn’t mean to intrude—”

“Well, you’re here now,” Marshall said with only a hint of annoyance. “At least have your tea.”

Gumball nodded, but was unsure. “Are you…are you okay?” He asked. “Is there anything that

maybe—I mean, can I do anything? Was it difficult…with Fionna, I mean?”

“No, not really,” Marshall said.

Gumball frowned. “Not really, what?”

Marshall shrugged. “All of it, I guess.” He lowered his voice. “I find myself wondering why I put such weight on things in my mind, recently…I don’t know, I guess I need to clear out the inventory of what ideas I have stored up—they’re getting…muddy.”

Gumball didn’t understand, but he nodded anyway.

“Everything,” Marshall muttered, “seems so important, but it can’t all be important. Spent too long trying to figure it out—it’s there, I know it is.”

“Marshall,” the Prince said his name softly, “you’re starting to worry me.”

The vampire looked up from the counter-top and seemed surprised. “I don’t mean to,” he said, “I’m fine. I will be fine. It will work itself out in time,” he smiled and waved it away, “there’s always that, isn’t there, Bubba?”

“Time? Yes,” Gumball agreed, sharing that smile that touched neither of their eyes. His heart still felt heavy, and while he sensed just a whiff of desperation in Marshall’s voice, it didn’t come with the aftertaste of danger like thoughts of the unstable vampire had in the past.

Gumball sighed. He wanted to make some little self-depreciating comment about how he himself was the wretched one, citing his jealousy as the reason with hopes of gaining maybe a little affectionate pity from the vampire, but he knew that it wouldn’t turn out that way, that there would be blame and argument and accusation to go along with it, he heard things like, _you have no right to be jealous of her after how you called me a monster and alienated me from all your candy people_ —

The Prince sat sobered. He had treated Marshall like a dangerous chemical all this time, afraid of his reaction to just about anything, but closing Marshall off was not the answer. Protecting himself in an emotional hazmat suit was not the way to go about trying to salvage this friendship. Marshall knew his nature, he knew his needs and he knew his heart, and even if he was dangerous he was intelligent, and in his mind there had always been a choice between darkness and light. Shutting Marshall out for fear of that darkness in him was not the way to make sure he didn’t indulge it.

Fionna was Marshall’s dear friend, they understood each other in ways that Gumball just hadn’t ever been able to grasp. Fionna was another reason for Marshall to see the world every night, and for that, Gumball should have been grateful.

Irrationally, foolishly, Gumball thought then that he would very much like to be another reason for Marshall to live.

“I stand by what I said,” Marshall said lightly, snapping Prince Gumball back into reality. “That I want you in my life.”

Gumball nodded, mouth dry and the kettle began to give the very first bubbling screech of steam. Marshall took it off the heat and poured water into one cup, then set the kettle back down on a cool burner.

“But you’re going to have to bear with me,” he continued, glancing up and taking a scoop of the powdered whitener. “—two, right?”

Again, Gumball nodded, really smiling this time.

Marshall smiled to himself and took up the sugar and didn’t ask before heaping three teaspoons into the cup.

“Bear with you?”

“Yes. I’m not very good at this,” Marshall said.

“You seem like you’re getting the hang of it,” Gumball offered gently. Marshall smiled, but it faded quickly.

“I’ve spent too much time alone,” he said. “Just like tonight, I get to thinking that all I want to be is alone, and then someone I love comes along and it’s only then that I realize how much I’ve missed them. Like I said, I need to revaluate what’s important to me—something you can appreciate, I’m sure. It’s going to take a lot of work, so you’re going to have to bear with me.” He glanced up, stirring the cup still and taking no care to be delicate about it as the spoon clanked nosily inside the cup. Gumball sensed that there was so much more he could have said then, but it was not his place to ask just yet what this half-demon youth was really thinking of when he said such things.

“It _is_ difficult, Bubba,” he said, dropping his voice as he looked up once again. “…You know. But I’m not going to give up, not on myself or on us.”

Gumball’s heart leapt and he was sure he saw just the saddest little smile form.

“I know,” Gumball said quietly. He had prepared so many things to say at this point in the conversation. All that time spent pacing or lying awake in his palace he had prepared the perfect dialogue in his head but just like before, now that they were really talking, nothing he had prepared could have been the right thing to say. The heart of it was much simpler. “It’ll be different this time.”

“It will be difficult for the both of us then,” Marshall said, coming around now with the cup of tea in his greyish hand. He stood tall before Gumball, his hair still mussed from the flying, his clothes still smelling fresh and sweet and cold as if all the energy of a lightning storm was bottle up inside him. Gumball looked up at him, let himself look at the boy—at his dark brow furrowed so handsomely now, at those lips that parted just slightly as he extended the cup of tea with the handle free for Gumball to take. He saw the darkish tongue dart out to moisten the bottom lip and he looked away.

The tea was the perfect colour, and smelled wonderfully restoring but as it was, he couldn’t imagine himself taking a sip of it for the world.

“I don’t want to want you like I want you,” Marshall said softly, “but I do.”

Gumball looked up at him, holding that cup of sweet, milky tea in his hands. He felt no fear, irrationally—as such feelings for Marshall had always been—he felt something else entirely.

“And you look at me the same way you always have,” Marshall said in the same gentle way, with no blame or accusation attached. “So yes, it will be difficult for the both of us.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay tuned for the second half of this chapter in Gumball's perspective. 
> 
> Also, your comments give me life! Tell me: do you prefer Marshall's perspective, or PG's?


	7. Peace Offering II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Second (short) half of this chapter in Gumball's perspective.
> 
> (Read the end notes)

* * *

It was so wonderfully close to something good without even needing to try. Marshall had put on a record some time ago, and it played on the little portable turntable that he’d brought down from his bedroom to set on the floor of the living room. Gumball lay on the sofa, with his chin against his chest, pillow clutched to his stomach and feet up on the arm as he dozed in the hazy bliss of a belly full of warm tea and sweet music to fill his head.

It wasn’t punk, it wasn’t rock, it wasn’t any combination or variation of the two but something deliciously mellow and acoustic and Marshall hadn’t been shy to admit that from the first time he’d heard this group, their music had reminded him of Gumball and that he listened to this one frequently.

He lay now, on the floor, with his head by Gumball’s feet closer to the record player. The overhead light was shut off, but there remained a fluorescent glow from the kitchen behind Gumball’s head enough to illuminate the room.

“This is the good stuff,” Marshall said lazily, “this…this is good enough.”

Gumball smiled to himself, eyes closed. He hummed, and agreed whole-heartedly.

“I like your sweater, by the way,” Marshall added, and Gumball’s smile broadened until he had to laugh. Marshall gave a little laugh of his own and when Gumball forced his sleepy eyes open to look at him, he saw the boy up on both elbows watching him, sincerely amused.

“What?” He asked.

Gumball shook his head and feigned bashfulness by throwing a hand over his face. “Can you believe I wore it just for you?”

“My favourite colour?” Marshall said, allowing himself to grin in such a way that his teeth were visible for just a second, but then the smile faded. He apologized.

“For what?” Gumball asked. It was true that he’d picked it for the colour.

“That probably sounded like a threat,” Marshall muttered with a sigh, laying back down with his arms folded over his face.  

“Not at all. Marshall, you can be candid with me…”

“Well then it sounded flirtatious,” Marshall rebutted perhaps a little sharply, letting his arms fall away and to the sides of his head.  

Gumball sunk back down into the sofa. “Calm down now, it was nothing like that,” he said tiredly. He couldn’t help but think of that recent little kiss, and wonder if it would ever happen again or if as Marshall had said the other night, that it had really been some terrible mistake. Laying there, when things had been so simple just a moment ago, he wanted a kiss—just a kiss, one sweet and tender little token of affection—with an intensity that was very nearly heart breaking.

Marshall knew what affect he had on people—on Gumball—that was why he had apologized.

There was really no reason, though, why there couldn’t be a kiss here and there. They were friends now, but they had once been more than that, and even Marshall would be lying to say he hadn’t thought about it too—why else then, would he have kissed him at the window?

A kiss might lead to more, or the desire for more, but a line could be drawn. There could be rules. If there wasn’t room in this relationship for a little affection between friends, then they would only go on being lonely, and that would only add another layer of tension that this relationship certainly didn’t need.

Gumball’s mouth had gone dry. He was aware that he was frowning, and tried his best to smooth his features.

Listen to the music.

Marshall liked to kiss, he always had. True, it was primarily a voracious thing—if not kept to the confines of the simply affectionate gesture of pressing one’s lips to another’s—but just like how Gumball could enjoy the passion in a kiss, it allowed Marshall to taste a little of that sugar without hurting the Candy Prince, without really _taking_ anything from him. A kiss was nothing like the devouring of his colour, it was more just like licking the spoon—

It took everything in Gumball’s power not to groan aloud—utterly mortified at his own ridiculous mind: he was six hundred years old for Glob’s sake, _get a grip_.

It was hopeless, besides, what would Gumball do? You didn’t just kiss someone who had made it clear that they didn’t want to be kissed. After their last conversation, it was a shock that Marshall had accepted any affection at all from Gumball after the way he’d been treated. He was terribly sorry for all that but it had been a long time ago and Marshall had kissed him at the window….

Stop thinking about _that._ That doesn’t apply. That was an impulse; it should have been forgiven immediately, wiped clean from the slate.

Marshall had said very clearly that it had been a mistake. Gumball just couldn’t go up to him and kiss him—even if he had the guts to do it—and just hope for the best like he might with any other person of interest. It would be a violation of their friendship, of their trust: Gumball couldn’t go up to Marshall and kiss him any more than Marshall could just come up and lick the sweetness of sugar off Gumball’s skin.

This was getting out of hand.

He opened his eyes and half sat up where he lay on the sofa, thinking that it was obviously time to go, and that he could come back and try again for something calm and totally platonic next time around—it had been nice, while it had lasted, hadn’t it?—but that for now it was simply impossible.

Marshall had been watching him, and when Gumball sat up to put his feet on the ground, Marshall sat up as well, immediately concerned.

“I should go,” Gumball said quietly. He didn’t want to look at the vampire.

Marshall didn’t say anything and Gumball got up and went to the door, but remembered that his shoes weren’t in that pile, but in the kitchen still. He backtracked and went over to the kitchen while Marshall sat on the floor and watched him walk back and forth, watched him sit on the cold kitchen floor to tie his shoes properly.

“It’s because of what I said, isn’t it?” Marshall asked quietly.

“No,” Gumball said immediately, “well, yes. Maybe. No, I don’t know, I just…” he took a deep breath and looked at the boy from his position on the floor.

“This was nice,” Gumball said softly, his shoes were tied, but he was still sitting. “This? The music, the tea? This was a great first step, Marshall…”

Marshall nodded. He didn’t ask why Gumball had to leave.

“My people,” Gumball offered hopelessly, “it’ll be dawn soon—I have to…”

“Yeah.”

“Marshall, I had a really great time, really. It was good. And the Fionna thing?”

Marshall looked away, but he was nodding.

Gumball was at a loss, suddenly very sorry that he was leaving. “I just don’t want to screw anything up. This was good, and I don’t want to fuck it up so soon.”

Marshall smiled, seemingly against his will and stood as Gumball stood.

“You don’t have to go,” Marshall offered quietly.

“I want it to be like this,” Gumball said to him. He wanted with all his heart for this relationship to be healthy this time, for it to be as good as it had been tonight. “I want things to be this simple and this sweet, but it’s going to take a lot of work for it to be simple.”

Marshall looked at him in the eyes as he approached the door. He looked very thoughtful, very serious.

“You’re right,” he said, “It was good tonight, wasn’t it?”

Gumball nodded, standing by the door. Marshall came to stand next to him, waiting awkwardly as if he planned an embrace, or as if he was trying to decide whether or not that would be acceptable.

Gumball hoped that he would decide it was.

“It will be easy, eventually,” Marshall said quietly, “and then we can enjoy each other’s company.”

Gumball’s heart tripped as he agreed in the quietest voice, watching Marshall’s hand rise slowly to feel the edge of Gumball’s magenta cardigan.

“Marshall…” the Prince said his name softly, just a small part of him hoping that Marshall wouldn’t hear the warning, meeting his eyes and seeing in a flash of his imagination being pushed against the door and kissed. His hands shook as he hesitated for a moment, then in a rush he took a step back and ran his fingers through his own pink hair and gave his head a little shake: just more ridiculousness, poison fantasy. “I have to go.”

He let himself out and felt a blast of cool air come off the water from the lake beyond. He breathed it deep, taking long strides down the plank-board dock, but after the first deep breath, the second one stuck in his throat with a lump that rose up seemingly from the very pit of his gut and the third breath was hardly more than a choke as he came to a stop at the mouth of the cave. He looked up at the lightening purple-grey sky and tried to look at the stars that shone still through tears that blurred his vision.

His heart hurt. He ached. He hung his head and let those shameful tears come as his shoulders slouched and he all but folded in on himself, drawing his arms tight into his chest.

He heard footfalls on the boards behind him and whined some little curse that caught miserably on a sob, and turning around he saw Marshall coming forward in the very first light of pre-dawn that wouldn’t yet burn him. His face was twisted with emotion, tears standing and fists balled as he took one determined stride after another coming right up to Gumball, who against his better judgement, threw his arms around the vampire’s neck and held him tight and cried. He didn’t care about the clatter of metal on wood; that little golden crown falling to the ground meant nothing in that moment.  

A sob broke out of Gumball’s chest to feel those thin but strong arms enclose around his ribs. He was all but crushed into the embrace but he loved every second of it; the urgency, the _need_ , and whatever else this might make an undead one feel _had_ to be tied to love, even if there was foreign hunger in the kisses laid on his shoulder and cheek. It had to be love.

He pulled away just enough to really look at Marshall, and taking leaps over the awkwardness that held them to propriety earlier, he took the vampire’s face in both his warm, pink hands and saw those demon eyes close against tears that fell cool on the Prince’s fingers.

Gumball laughed despite himself as Marshall ran his hand over his pink hair, smiling as well in spite of the pain and finally closed the distance between them with a kiss.

Gumball’s breath halted as those hands pressed his back and pulled him closer, his heart raced madly and swelled at the little whimper that escaped Marshall even as the kiss continued, unhurried and wonderfully sweet and betraying none of the urgency of their embrace. Gumball knotted his fingers in that dark fur of hair at Marshall’s scalp and Marshall parted his lips just slightly, just enough to test the boundary with the tip of his cool tongue trespassing for the tiniest taste of Gumball’s.

Marshall broke the kiss with a little groan, but held on tightly, his forehead resting against Gumball’s as he paused in a seeming moment of weakness. “ _I’ve missed you_!” He breathed almost desperately, and licked the sugar off his undead lips.

Flushed, hardly able to keep his breath, Gumball asked in the steadiest voice he could manage if he might be allowed back inside.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's this!? Two chapters in one day? I thought I was going to have a productive real-life day today, but I guess not! 
> 
> Oh well, it's just a short one, really--just a little tease--but my GLOB...finally, right? 
> 
> *waggles finger* Those boys...


	8. Trepidation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After some time to reflect, both Marshall and Gumball wonder what they've gotten themselves into.

* * *

 

Marshall woke at dusk, alert in an instant and fully aware.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that he had somehow spontaneously passed out, but that was always the way it was if he fell asleep after the sun had fully risen. He remembered every detail of the night before—until dawn, and that was when things became a little hazy. He remembered Gumball—that much he remembered that much fully—but he only vaguely remembered telling the other boy that he simply couldn’t stay awake any longer, and that he needed to go upstairs to sleep, but he didn’t actually remember climbing the ladder to his room and getting into bed.

It was like he hadn’t even slept a wink, having awoken exhausted and staring at the ceiling.

The last two nights seemed like dreams from two completely different lives. He tried to remember the peace he had felt in the clouds but to think of it now only made him shudder. Sitting in bed in the glow of little paper-lantern string lights hung up against the far wall of his room, he thought about rising up there again and trying to clear his head of all this. His stomach bottomed-out just to think it, even though as he paused to listen, he was relieved to discover that he was alone in the house.  That cold silver light and wondrous serenity was now just an unattainable beauty, those dreams fading almost beyond his memory so that they seemed just too shallow and naive.

Marshall wasn’t in the clouds. He wasn’t a Demon Prince. He wasn’t the destroyer of any worlds, bringer of any peace. Marshall was very much tangled up in this world whether he liked it or not, and nothing of it would be disappearing any time soon no matter how wistfully he imagined it.

Barely even a vampire, Marshall Lee was just some boy, waking alone in bed just like any other mortal, twisted in sheets that hadn’t been washed in too long. He was just a boy that needed to do laundry and go grocery-shopping and maybe listen to some music and figure this all out—as if he didn’t know himself already after all this time. 

He put a hand over his chest. It hurt.

Gumball. Bubba. Prince-Fucking-Gumball. Science-wizard made of bubble-gum…

Grob, Gob, Glob and Grod it was happening again.

Marshall got out of bed and took off his clothes on the way to the bathroom. He turned on the shower so that the handle stuck straight up between hot and cold, and stood in the dark room as it became humid.

That night he had spent in the clouds was too far away and the potential outcome of that dream was too far away. Foolish thoughts. Stupid demon day-dreaming: it meant nothing. The past would always be in the past and the future would always be just beyond reach: Marshall could only control the present and that was what he told himself as he stood under the warm water with the lights still off, trying to think of nothing as he asked himself again what he really wanted.

He turned the water up a little hotter and stood facing the wall opposite to the showerhead with his head hanging back, hair plastered back against his skull as the water pelted him.

It was a good sign really, it could mean that Gumball knew how foolishly wanton the whole encounter had been, how totally out of line. He’d been there when Marshall had succumbed to the sun-sleep, which came on heavy and almost unavoidable without serious will-power, but Marshall hadn’t expected to wake up to company.

There might be a note though, downstairs, or in the bedroom somewhere? Marshall didn’t know—he hadn’t thought to check. He turned back to the faucet and turned the water a little hotter, feeling the heat rise in a wonderful wave of comfort almost as if he were standing next to someone alive. 

He told himself he didn’t care. There might be a note, there might not be a note—that didn’t change the fact that this could never have been simple no matter how much the two of them had grown and matured. Marshall had thought in that last moment before turning this into exactly what it had been two hundred years ago that it would be worth it this time, that it would be good this time and that he was immortal and a demon and if he couldn’t just accept that Gumball was a sexual being and humor him through it, then what kind of immortal was he? One didn’t just turn their nose up at the idea of physical sexual contact for a thousand years and expect to maintain any lasting relationships outside the Nightosphere, and standing on the other side of that door knowing that for whatever reasons he had wanted it, that he had wanted nothing more than to open his mouth on pink flesh, thinking he that there would only ever be one person whose needs would be worth humoring in exchange for love and the taste of a kiss.

That was it, wasn’t it? Instant gratification. Marshall knew what that felt like: he experienced it with Gumball without drawing an ounce of that syrupy blood. He felt hunger when he kissed the boy, true—and that was wrong!—but it hadn’t peaked and he hadn’t given into it but he had been allowed a taste all the same, and that—for now—was more than enough to make him want to see Gumball again as soon as possible.

How long had it been since hunger had been targeted at a specific person? He hadn’t ever even felt this toward Fionna, this lust.

Marshall turned up the water. It helped calm him down.

He focused on what he knew.

He knew that he loved Bubba Gumball.

He knew, that when there was a door and twenty feet of darkness between them, he could imagine doing just about anything for the sake of love. He wasn’t concerned about the kiss or the depth of the kiss or the length of it or the heat in it; he had done much worse and besides, when it all came down to it, Marshall had enjoyed the whole thing quite a bit. The act itself, putting himself in that position that was so close it might make him shudder if he couldn’t still taste sweetness on his lips didn’t bother him, didn’t bother him so much as the thought of what Gumball could only assume it had meant to him.

He knew that it was wrong. Wrong, but not dirty. Wrong because when Gumball had opened his mouth to him and let his vampire tongue in for the first time in two hundred years, Marshall hadn’t flushed deep red with the blood of the living: no passion was stirred, no long-forgotten desire awakened—no, none of it, even if the pleasure in it had weakened his knees.

Love be damned, that boy tasted good.                 

His Highness had come back to the house eagerly enough, and had been eager enough to fall on his back on that couch again and bear Marshall’s weight just for the pressure of a gently placed thigh between the legs. He’d been eager enough to kiss Marshall’s dead lips and relish in their chill and run his fingers through black hair that was, as he’d said, like fur.

The Prince had even moaned aloud when in a moment of weakness Marshall had dipped his nose down to trace a jawline and inhale that strawberry scent of him, holding the back of his head with surprisingly strong pink fingers as if Marshall wasn’t just an animal, trusting, lifting his chin even, letting Marshall kiss…

Like the old days. Like the old days with Bubba, like the old days before him.

For all that sugary blood he couldn’t digest, Marshall had kissed that throat. It had been the first night of their reconciliation, just minutes after agreeing that mellow records and low light and comfortable silence was going to be the tune of this new healthy relationship, he had not only given some token of affection in going out to Bubba on the dock, but Marshall had kissed the boy’s goddamn throat…

And those words he had said:

“So you do feel something…”

Bubba Gumball had never understood it, not any little part of it.

Marshall let his hair fall over his face as he stood under the water. He looked at the stringy black ends of it hanging down and looked at his greyish hands in the dark and the steam, greyish toes with dark-painted toenails—Glob, how long ago had he done that?

He told himself that it wasn’t over yet. He told himself that there was a way he could still salvage this. He told himself that Gumball would understand if—

And more than that he didn’t want to kiss him again, it would be a lie to tell himself even in silence that Gumball would accept a renegotiation of last night’s unspoken terms.

Marshall turned off the shower and ran his hands back over his hair, squeezing as much of the water out of it to drip down his back before stepping out onto the bathmat. The room was filled with steam and his skin would be warm to the touch. Hot showers always helped him focus, always helped him to calm down. If he didn’t feel quite so much like a dead thing, it was always easier to push past the nagging hunger and be objective.

Objectively, he knew that if he was going to see Bubba any time soon and if he was going to have the will and the stamina to push through this bought of uncertainty and understand the churning feeling in his stomach, he knew that he was going to have to feed and he was going to have to do it properly.

 

* * *

 

Marshall didn’t even bother with the refrigerator. In a pinch, those strawberries and apples and even brightly coloured chillies that left a tingling on his lips, would offer up their colour and satisfy the nagging enough to strum a guitar or float along the breeze over the treetops, but if he was going to be spending time with people, he needed something much more substantial to calm his nerves.

He checked his room, he checked the kitchen, and finding no note, he put on shoes and left to hunt.

Since having gone and come back from this common realm they called Ooo, hunting in any capacity had been difficult for him. Not only was everyone here so fucking moral, but the animals—and even some of the plants—were sentient enough to speak to him as he swooped down from the treetops. Bubba might not call it an equal crime, but Marshall was convinced that he would be prosecuted and put on trial for killing any creature smart enough to speak to him—never mind if it was made of candy or made of meat.

It had never bothered him so much before, in the past he had killed human beings, drank their blood; he had killed candy-people, sucked out their colour; he had killed animals for blood as well and when his priorities had been different, killing animals had been a last resort simply because they couldn’t talk to him, and somehow left him feeling less satisfied.

It had been Bubba who had suggested it might be possible to suck the colour out of inanimate material. Marshall had been disgusted by the idea at first—as disgusted as he would have been to drink the blood of a dead thing—but taking colour out of inanimate living flesh, such as the flesh of fruit, hadn’t been quite so horrifying, and so he had kept such things on hand for emergencies, or bouts of laziness. 

Up until his departure, and even in his journeys far away from the common realm, Marshall had hunted animals—whether they’d talked to him or not—and had dubbed those foolish candy-people who had gone outside the kingdom gates after dark, fair game. Gumball, of course, had never tolerated this, but Fionna had so recently just admitted that she knew he had done this, and that he still—from time to time—made fair game of wanderers as it struck his fancy to do so. Marshall couldn’t help but wonder if the Prince knew too, and if after all this time it was something he was able to accept as a cost to letting a vampire live on your land.

Now it was more difficult. He didn’t have to kill anymore. He didn’t have to hurt people to get what he needed. He did have a way out. He could turn around, go home and suck the colour out of a whole bushel of apples and be done with it and there was a dark little welling pit of dread in his stomach to think that he was out here now simply because he didn’t want the fruit, and that he would take a life tonight not because he had to, but because he wanted to.

He hated to admit it, but despite the fact that they were mutants, and despite the fact that he took only their colour, he was beginning to feel just a little something for those candy-things—not because they were people, really, but just because they were Bubba’s: his creation, his own little community to keep him company, to keep him occupied for this eternity while Marshall only wondered what it would be like to be truly alone. Marshall didn’t want to take that away from him if that was what he needed to be truly happy. Eternity had taught him one thing: it was crueler to take away the thing which made one’s life bearable, than it was to simply take one’s life. 

Besides, the novelty of drinking colour had long ago worn off—when it came to that vaguely bitter-tasting colour red, he would have rather had the heat in his face from drinking blood. Killing candy-people by means of turning them white—he didn’t know why they died, exactly, maybe trauma—wasn’t nearly as satisfying as it needed to be to outweigh the consequences of facing their Prince.

There was another part of him that felt that little pit of dread grow even bigger to think that after all those years of just doing this because he wanted to and without a shred of remorse, that he felt it now because of that pink prince and that little girl in bunny ears, when so many before them who had deserved it too, hadn’t even received a backward glance.

To think—just two nights ago he would have ended the world only to extend his blissful zen state, killed them all for a century alone in which to boil off all the unnecessary feeling and distill into the demon that had always existed inside this boyish shell.

Now all of it just seemed pointless.

Whatever it meant, he didn’t want to think about it. Whether or not he felt the way he did, he needed to feed and he was going to do it whether or not it would disappoint Bubba or Fionna—not that he intended to make a story of it for them anyway. This was his business, and it was his decision and in the grand scheme of things, he was really capable of so much worse, wasn’t he?

 

* * *

 

Bubba Gumball woke smiling. He had managed a couple of hours’ restless sleep on the small, uncomfortable sofa in his quarters, sitting up and feeling like he had been dropped from a fifteen storey building or that he had fallen asleep inside a cement mixer, but still, he woke smiling.

Groggy as he made his way to the bathroom to change, he pressed the intercom button on the wall and informed Peppermint Maid that he would join her shortly for a late breakfast at 9am, and that he would greatly appreciate it if some coffee could be sent up for him.

Having slept in his clothes, he found those jeans had left their creases in his skin on the tops of his legs and around the backs of his knees, and that stubbornly, they weren’t going to go away with just a little prodding.

A nice cool shower was all he would need, and indeed that cool spray was bliss on his back and over his scalp, rushing over his shoulders with the freshness of spring. He lifted his arms over his head and stood with the water rush down over his bare chest and sighed with his head leaning back, feeling the beating droplets on his throat. He smiled.

That boy.

He hadn’t wanted to think too much. He had made an effort not to think too much as last night had progressed into this morning. Marshall had come to him this time, Marshall had kissed him—again!—and there would be no guilt from Bubba Gumball today. Marshall had initiated it, and whatever Marshall’s sexuality was or had been all along, the vampire had enjoyed that kiss and that was as far as Gumball was willing to delve into this situation, at least for today.

In retrospect, he thought that he probably should have left a note. But what would it have said? I had a great time? See you when you wake up? Call me? Meet me at my place? He had no idea what Marshall expected of this, might as well let him make the next move since Gumball had been the one to crash Marshall’s home last night. Anyway, Gumball knew himself and if he had paused long enough to reflect and write a note about it, he would have found something to overthink and that was absolutely the last thing he wanted to do now.

Gumball flushed to remember it, to remember that distinctive little groan in the back of Marshall’s throat. He remembered just a little of that strength which in small doses was just so good in contrast to his easy life in the kingdom where nobody ever really touched him.

The Prince swayed under cool water, feeling his skin tingle from prolonged exposure, but he didn’t care.

Living on the edge, he thought to himself with a foolish grin, and then turned off the water as the tingling became more like pins and needles. His hair was going to start to get too sticky, and then it would just be an unruly mess all day if he didn’t get some oil into it soon.

The mirror wasn’t fogged when he stepped out of the shower, so when he looked in the mirror he saw himself immediately. Although exhausted, it didn’t show, rather there seemed some irrepressible smile that touched his eyes even when his lips lay comfortably neutral.

Otherwise, he was just himself. His chest was perhaps a little boyish, although more developed than Marshall’s skinny shoulders would ever be. Gumball wasn’t muscular, but he was not as slight of limb as the vampire was, with just a trace of hipbone showing where he tied his towel.

Gumball’s mouth went dry to remember the sensation of the vampire pressed against him—so thin and yet so strong, those hands commanding submission even though Marshall the Boy hadn’t ever asked for such a thing. Moving quickly, hands trembling just slightly, hair mussed in urgency and cool breath against his collarbone, vampire-hip-bone dug into Gumball’s thigh and the press of hard belly against his—

Gumball braced himself against the edge of the sink. Let out a slow breath. Reached for that strawberry-scented hair oil from the shelf and moved mechanically to begin his day.

Don’t think so much, he told himself. Going to ruin it. 

He looked at himself in the mirror. He was flushed and that smile had faded in its place was a hardness with its own demanding. He let out another slow breath and turned his chin up just slightly and saw a few little pale marks left on the flesh of his throat. He leaned closer to the mirror, touched one of these patches but felt no pain of a bruise but figured it could be called a hickey all the same.

A hint of annoyance, maybe, that he would have to cover this up, but he felt that smile return and knew he couldn’t blame anyone but himself. He had asked for this, hadn’t he? He’d all but begged for it, he’d lifted his head and let him do it, for glob’s-sake...

He shook his head at himself. He needed to get a grip. Sometimes, even knowing, even in the moment and knowing that Marshall was what he was and that the reason why there was demanding in his every gesture was because he was not the same and that his hungers and his lusts were not the same, he could forget the specifics of it.          

Let a vampire kiss my neck.

Incredibly stupid.

Their first night, too, their first kiss all over again and he had let it get so far. Had it been any other vampire, he might have lost control; after all, their relationship was still strained, was it not? How easy would it have been for Marshall to—what was stopping him, really? Sure, the vampire was willing to reconcile, but there was no way there was still love there, or new love so soon…right?

It would have been easy, and no matter how much Marshall fought himself to do these things, there was a part of him that still wanted to do them. Without articulating the specific reasons for Marshall’s resistance, his final break in willpower and the sense of danger that came with it had been terribly exciting. But thinking of it now, thinking how he had all but invited such a thing, Gumball shuddered. Maybe Marshall did love him and it was love that had stopped it from getting any more dangerous than it needed to be, but proof of the vampire’s weakness despite it was there on Gumball’s throat, and Gumball had pushed him because he had been—

The buzzer on his intercom rang. There was no point going to answer it, Peppermint Maid was only going to tell him that his pancakes were going to get cold if he didn’t hurry down.

Gumball swallowed nothing and looked at his reflection again, those little white patches and tried to fix his hopeless hair. 

Incredibly stupid.

 

 


	9. Hospital Cafeteria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marshall is called to the Candy Kingdom, but a token of peace from Bubba makes it clear that he has understood more than Marshall has previously given him credit for, and takes an unexpected emotional toll him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What dumb chapter name, I know.

* * *

 

Marshall was a little nervous coming up to the Candy Kingdom castle’s enormous gingerbread door, but he had been invited to the castle by the Candy Prince himself, and had even walked through the front gates as a show of good will, and had walked down the path all the way up to that hulking castle made of cake.

He wondered if anyone had ever tried to eat their way through the walls. He was lost in a little image of Lumpy Space Prince attempting it, and when the guard opened the door to his knock and saw the vampire smirking in the dark, Marshall was sure what he saw was a glimmer of real terror in the face of that freakishly large banana on a stick.

Marshall cleared his throat and looked away.

“I uh, I have a royal invitation,” he said, not looking at the thing, but just past it.

“Yeah, he told us to expect you, Marshall,” the banana guard said.

Marshall did look at it, at its beady dark eyes and that weird must-be-chocolate stuff on top of its head. Did these things bathe? Or would the chocolate just melt off? Would that hurt? Bubba took showers, but cold showers…hot water could hurt the sugar-structure of his candy skin.

Marshall cleared his throat again, nodded and was allowed entrance. It always weirded him out when these things called him by name. It seemed much too personal.

The front hall was empty, which was unusual for Marshall to see. The huge space was well lit by tapers and chandelier, and he could see clearly the long tables at the edges of the walls that would be decked out with candy—for eating—during a party. There was a platform at the far end of the hall that was raised by three steps and Marshall himself had, in the past, even set up his guitar and played a few songs there for these simple sugar-headed creatures and Fionna.

Marshall thought to himself that once these active nights died down a bit, he could write a whole album just from the whirlwind of emotion he’d been forced to go through, but he told himself that tonight his attention would be focused on Gumball and what was best for the both of them. There would be no existential crises tonight: there would be no thoughts past these kingdom walls and his own little cave, no contemplating his place in the universe or the world’s fate should he decide to have anything to do with it. He would not think about the Nightosphere or that peaceful space above the clouds. He would smile, he would be polite and he would sit down in the Prince’s bedroom and they would listen to music or watch a movie and hopefully not have to have another exhaustive conversation.

Marshall made it to the steps of the platform before the doors at the end of the hallway were opened and the little maid constructed of striped peppermint candy came out in her little black-and-white outfit. She smiled at Marshall.

Curiously, even to himself, Marshall smiled back.

“Come now,” she said in her high-pitched and oddly aristocratic-sounding voice, “PG is in the lab.”

Marshall nodded and let himself be led along. He let his shoes find weight on the polished floor, let his footsteps be heard. The light was bright in the hall as well, but he was getting used to it and barely had to squint. He’d been told this squinting often looked like a scowl, so he tried extra hard to smile when these candy-things looked at him, tried extra hard to make it look genuine without showing his teeth.

Peppermint Maid stopped at the door to Prince Gumball’s laboratory, smiled at Marshall and continued on her way in that little French outfit, tiny sculpted sugar feet shoved into tiny black shoes with spike heels.

Marshall shook his head, knocked on the door, and was immediately called to come inside.

Gumball was sitting at his desk: not a work-desk behind test tubes and beakers, but at his writing desk and looked up with a smile when Marshall entered.

The room was very brightly lit, the walls white, the floor white, all the tabletops and sinks of various size shining stainless steel. There were steel and glass cabinets against the walls, most of which were locked. Some of them had coloured liquids inside, some were clearly refrigerated and some had no way of seeing inside at all, maybe some of these specimens and chemicals were contained in confidentiality, or maybe some were photo-sensitive.

Marshall looked around, made it clear that he was looking around, trying to let Gumball know that despite how he knew nothing of how these things worked, or what they were for, or how on earth this bubblegum-boy could ever wrap his head around these elements and their properties, that all of it was still interesting to him. Quite literally, the Prince had built his life on this stuff.

Gumball got up from his desk, didn’t know quite what to do with his hands and so he made some sweeping gesture of the room and said in a theatrical voice:

“Welcome to my la-bor-a-tory.”

Marshall smiled faintly. He felt nervous. This was unusual. He’d very nearly had a royal reception, and didn’t like how these servants of his knew his name and knew to invite him in. He didn’t like how they looked at him.

Gumball adverted his eyes, smiled nervously, cleared his throat.

“How are you?” He asked. Marshall watched him fidget. “Sorry I didn’t leave a note or anything the other night.”

Marshall smiled. He was glad to hear that he hadn’t been too hopeful to expect one, that it had also crossed Bubba’s mind. “No worries, Bubba. I was passed right out.”

Prince Gumball smiled. “Yeah, you were. Still, I’m sorry though. I…I guess I expected you would call anyway.”

“I had something I needed to take care of,” Marshall said, but instantly regretted it. It sounded theatrical—but unintentionally so, childishly so, and much too ominous. He went out on a limb and told the truth. “I uh…I needed to get myself under control.”

Gumball laughed, seemingly against his will and then flushed deeply and ran a hand through his shoe-string hair. “That was pretty crazy, huh?” he said, cringed. “I mean…not that…not that you weren’t in control but…” he let out a slow breath, eyes wide as he stared at the floor.

“You felt it?” Marshall asked flatly. “I thought you liked it when I felt things for you.”

The pink Prince looked at him more seriously now. “I do, of course I do, but not if it hurts you. Not if you have to negotiate with yourself not to—”

“Don’t make this about me,” Marshall said softly. “It hasn’t been vulgar yet, don’t make it vulgar. I’m trying, Bubba, and I’m doing a better job at taking care of myself this time. You really don’t need to worry, not about that.”

Bubba floundered. He looked shocked, and then only pleasantly surprised. Marshall had surprised himself a little too, with the conviction behind his words and the truth in them, as well as his own deliverance of the message which had said as well that, this is how it is, I know my faults now drop it, it’s alright.

“Well, that’s good,” Bubba said, smiling, “I’m glad you’re taking care of yourself, Marshall. Really.”

Marshall hummed. He wouldn’t say the words aloud and make it sound like an accusation, but he wasn’t sure if Bubba would be so happy if he let himself think about what those words really meant. The image he seemed to hold in his mind of what it meant to be a vampire, and what it actually meant to be a vampire seemed to be two wholly different things: on paper, it all seemed well and good, but he could barely even watch the colour drain from a piece a fruit let alone be party to or condone the kind of thing that kept Marshall in a state which allowed their new proximity.

“Uhm,” Bubba took a deep breath, Marshall heard his heart race and he felt sorry for it.

“Why are you scared?” He asked earnestly, trying to look at him as the boy from his living room and not the Prince of Mutants in his la-bor-a-tory. It was like Bubba was two different people in Marshall’s mind, and here and now in this place, fear from the Prince of Mutants was annoying, when Marshall knew should have felt so much more than that.

He came closer, right up to the desk so they weren’t talking to each other across the room like strangers—or enemies. He looked at that pink face, at those dark eyes and smiled, watched the smile touch Bubba’s own features. He wondered if maybe Bubba saw him now as simply The Vampire in My Castle: after all, Marshall hadn’t been in this room in centuries.

“Surely you’re not afraid of me?” He asked.

Bubba cleared his throat, seemed to weigh some decision and then stepped back. He still kept a light air, although nervous, and walked over to one of the large coolers.

“Do you still drink blood?” He asked.

Marshall blinked. He was totally unprepared for such a question.

“Excuse me?” He asked, the words coming out perhaps a little darker than intended with his confusion.

Gumball shook his head, flushed again—that gorgeous colour. Marshall let himself look at him.

“No, no,” Gumball was saying, “please, no—don’t be offended…I was just wondering, I—”

“Is this some kind of trick question?” Marshall asked quietly, looking around, trying to find evidence of why he had been brought to this room. He was suddenly nervous, Gumball would never have broached his subject unless it was absolutely necessary.

“No, Marshall,” Gumball said softly, imploringly. “I—”

Marshall stepped back. “I’m uncomfortable with this subject,” he said flatly.

He had been here before, he had been asked these sorts of questions by Gumball and by people like Gumball in the past. These people—for whatever reason—had seen him fit for loving and had pushed and pulled at him with their influence, and like Gumball with his strawberries, tried to change him. They saw that glimmer of regret, that little twitch of shame at the subject of killing to stay alive. And then these questions: how is life? How are you enjoying not having to do that monstrous thing?  Only to be disappointed, disgusted, to discover that he did it still anyway, and why? Well, because all along he quite liked doing it. No strawberry would ever replace a beating heart.

“I know it’s a little personal,” Gumball said quickly, “it’s just that after the other night—”

“After the other night—what? What do you mean, after the other night?”

“Well, it’s just, I think it’s clear—”

“Clear?”

“Marshall!”

Marshall stared at him, prepared to defend himself. Prepared to deny that the night before he had gone out into the woods and found a deer and hadn’t even tried to figure out if it was the talking kind and he’d killed it and drank all its blood. He hadn’t felt a shred of remorse about it either—not until he’d imagined some form of this very conversation taking place right now, that look on Gumball’s face.

Except that now, he was looking at him with some other look: that pleading wide-eyed innocent sort of, please just be honest with me! sort of look and it was breaking Marshall’s dead heart.

“I killed a deer,” Marshall said, and took a breath, ready to say more, ready again to defend the action, ready to say that of all the evil he was capable of, how dare Gumball get on his high horse and condemn him for this tiny little thing? Gumball himself was known to eat meat from time to time—Fionna was practically a carnivore! It was no different, really—

“Good,” Gumball said, giving his head the tiniest shake, looking at Marshall with wide eyes.

Marshall didn’t know what to say. He made nervous fists of his hands, licked his lips, looked again at the white walls and stainless steel tables.

“I don’t understand…” he said slowly. “What do you mean, good? What is this about?”

“The other night,” Gumball said gently, “I just…I was a little caught off guard, I guess, a bit surprised, but I shouldn’t have been. I mean, you are a vampire.”

“What do you mean?” Marshall asked, again in that slow manner of speaking as if he were afraid of what the Prince would say next.

The Prince didn’t have to say anything. He unbuttoned the collar of his shirt, the one buttoned up to the throat under one of his many pinkish-coloured cardigans and there Marshall saw that a patch of his skin was lighter than the rest of him.

He drew in a breath and covered his mouth with his hand. He wanted to deny it, he wanted to tell himself that it was impossible, and he wanted to tell himself that it was only his nature, and he wanted so badly to apologize all at the same time. Conflicted, he just shook his head and gasped.

“It’s okay!” Gumball said quickly, reaching out, reaching up and it was only then that Marshall realized he had levitated and was now floating halfway between the floor and ceiling. He came down at the beckon, but hesitated with the toe of one shoe just lightly touching the white tile floor.

“Bubba,” he nearly whispered, “I am so…” he shook his head. He could not believe how careless he had been. It wasn’t the sunsleep that had prevented him from remembering, it must have been an accident; the colour must have come away in the kiss, teeth placed just against the flesh by some hopeless instinct. He had kissed that tender, undeserving throat and sucked just a little too hard, sucked just a little of that colour away. He licked his lips from habit, and was mortified even for that, but Gumball didn’t seem to notice.

“It didn’t hurt,” Gumball said earnestly. He came up to Marshall, reached up, clasped those cold hands even as Marshall flinched and pressed them in his own. Marshall set his feet flat on the floor, searched the boy’s eyes for some hint of betrayal or blame but found none. He looked at the boy’s neck and Gumball lifted his head to allow his gaze and he saw again that light patch that in the space of a day must have regained some colour. He let his cool fingers touch that pink skin, feel its softness, feel its warmth.

“Really,” Gumball said, pressing his hand again and looking him in the eyes. “I don’t know why I was surprised when I saw it.”

“It was an accident, I swear,” Marshall breathed. He put his hand on Gumball’s shoulder, squeezed him a little. He wanted to take him into an embrace and he wanted to push him away at the same time.

“Of course it was,” Gumball said softly.

“I swear, I didn’t….you must think…you must think I’m some horrible…some insidious—”

“Stop,” Gumball said. He looked away for just a moment, looked at Marshall’s lips but Marshall took a step back before he could lean in to kiss. Gumball looked just a little hurt because of it, but accepted the honesty in the gesture. “Of course I don’t think you tricked me into kissing you.”

Marshall nodded, mind still racing.

“If you had, you would have taken much more,” Gumball added with the smallest smile. He stepped back, ran his hand over his hair and turned away while Marshall stared after him. “What I was trying to say though, was that I was surprised because I had thought you didn’t really go for blood so much anymore, that you were—more or less—interested in colour.”

Marshall shook his head. He would have flushed if he could have. He felt rising shame, embarrassment. He cleared his throat. “I do…” he said, “I mean, I am. I guess…both, but I didn’t…” he cleared his throat, “I didn’t bite you, Bubba, that I know, besides—”

“And I know it too, Marshall, that’s not what I’m saying,” Gumball said, laying his hands on one of the tables. “But you kissed my throat…kissing someone’s neck is by no means an act of vampirism on its own, but you did kiss me there because you do still drink blood, right? I mean, you hunger for it? It’s a source of passion for you?”

Marshall replayed the words in his head. They made sense to him, but that they made sense to Bubba Gumball came as a bit of surprise. He hesitated.

“You kiss me because I taste good…” Gumball said quietly. He looked away for just a second, unable, maybe, to keep looking at Marshall’s shocked expression.

“And because I love you,” Marshall told him, hoping the Candy Prince believed it.

Gumball gave his head a little shake, frowned, cleared his throat and finally nodded.

“But…” he swallowed, looked at the vampire again, “I mean…I kiss you because it feels good to me in ways that…you know, because I feel…because I experience…”

“Because you’re a sexual being, yes, it turns you on…” Marshall said quickly while Gumball again cleared his throat.

“Well yes, that and because it’s an affectionate thing too, I mean a kiss doesn’t have to be sexual or voracious, it can simply be…a way to express…feelings for another person…”

Marshall nodded. His slow brain caught up with him, realized what he had just said and that Gumball hadn’t been able to say it in return. He looked down, trying to think and trying not to think.

“So if you hungered only for the colour of my skin you would have kissed my lips all the while, but it’s because you drink blood still, that your attentions were drawn elsewhere.”

Marshall shook his head. “You make me sound like such a monster,” he said quietly, “why can’t you just believe that I kiss you because I care for you? Want to be close to you?”

“Of course you do,” Gumball said in that gentle, reassuring voice he’d been using for most of this conversation, “but neither of us are innocent.”

Marshall sighed. This was true. He looked at the Prince again finally, gave a little nod.

“The reason why I asked,” Gumball continued, “was because some time ago, you told me that darker shades of red tend to taste bitter to you, and that you’d lost interest—in some ways—for drinking blood. I had assumed since then that you were mostly attracted to colour.” He turned away again, turned to one of the coolers and opened it, releasing a blast of cold air that swept across the white tiles and over Marshall’s ankles. He watched Gumball turn to face the room again, closing the cooler door behind him with a vacuum sealed plastic bag in his hands.

It was unmistakable, what was inside.

Marshall stared at it. Gumball laid it on the stainless steel table, running his long-fingered hand over the top of it, making it jiggle a little. He lined up the edge of it with the edge of the table and didn’t look at Marshall as he spoke.

“It’s actually in my best interest to keep you interested in—”

“Whose blood is that?”

Gumball glanced up, there was a glimmer of fear there, maybe to Marshall’s intensity and then he looked away again.

There was no writing on the bag, not that he could see. He couldn’t smell it, but Marshall knew before Gumball said the words. Why this pretense otherwise? Why make this so dramatic if it wasn’t truly so important?

“This is Fionna’s blood.”

Marshall swallowed. He didn’t know what question to ask first. He didn’t know why he felt a little ball of dread in his belly break open and release a sour taste to his mouth. He didn’t know why he felt so dirty suddenly, so very dark.

He told himself that there was a hospital here. Fionna had been treated here. Gumball could have taken her blood any time, probably even with her consent—who was he kidding, of course she had consented, but why?

“She’s the only one of her species that either of us know,” Gumball said, answering Marshall’s question before he could ask it, “if she gets seriously injured—which is likely—she will come here for treatment—which she has. If she needs a transfusion—which she has needed in the past—the only suitable blood to give her would be her own. I’ve asked her to come and make regular donations, but she rarely thinks to or has the time or energy. You know Fionna, she doesn’t care even though she knows it’s important.

“Just a kid,” Marshall muttered absently.

Gumball nodded. “Yes. So I took the liberty some time ago to have her first sample cloned,” he shook his head and picked up the bag. “I don’t know if cloned blood has any value to you,” he met Marshall’s eyes and held the gaze. “But I can make as much as you could ever drink, if you want it.”

Marshall’s hands trembled. He couldn’t look away from that dark burgundy bag of liquid life. He told himself it wasn’t really Fionna’s blood, it was cloned. It wasn’t human: it was cloned. It was made in this _la-bor-a-tory_ just like all those mutants in this kingdom, it didn’t belong to Fionna, Bubba Gumball had made it.

He didn’t know if cloned blood would be any good or not. He thought for a second—half a second—if it would taste the same, and when he realized how long it had been since he’d tasted human blood his knees went weak and he levitated.

“I mean, it’s not like it’s really alive or anything,” Gumball said, snapping Marshall back in the room, “but it’s something. I know that hunting must get tedious, and I know you can’t really live off strawberries, I mean, you don’t have to pretend to for my sake,” the Prince was blushing again. “So it won’t be like how it used to be when you could feed—”

 “Thank you,” Marshall said quietly.

“…I mean, it wouldn’t replace any—”

“Thank you,” Marshall said again, cutting Gumball off as he continued to flounder. He knew more than Marshall had thought; in the years that had past he had either spent some time trying to understand, or he had sat in this lab and done some research on Marshall’s people—of which there were none left—Marshall guessed he had probably done a little of both.

Gumball was right: it wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t be like drinking warm blood from a human being, it would be much more sterile than that, much less intimate but perhaps that was a good thing. If it was palatable at all, it would be the blood-equivalent to sucking the red out of strawberries versus hunting down Bubba Gumball’s villagers. Having this option did no more than add a little variety to his life of abstinence.

“…Marshall,” Gumball said his name gently. He seemed to see this pain. “I just thought…”

Marshall nodded. He came up to the table, laid his hand there on the cold metal just beside the bag. There was writing on it, in white, on the other side just along the edge. It had the blood type and species on it, a date. Fionna’s name was not printed.

He felt cheap, for having felt anything at all in looking at that bag of blood on the table. Of course it wouldn’t be anything like drinking human blood, it wouldn’t even be warm.

Marshall stood close enough to Gumball that he could have easily leaned in to kiss him without any trouble. He looked at the boy, tried to smile, tried not to feel too much of anything and did just that. With one hand still on the table, he let the other find its way around the living boy’s waist and pulled him in for an embrace, telling himself that for now, the warmth he found here would just have to do.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Marshall dropped a bomb there, didn't he? Poor guy...don't worry, Bubba can be a bit of a robot sometimes, but he'll accept his own heart sooner or later.


	10. Hopeless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bubba is a little emo high-school girl laying on his bed and sighing over a future he knows is impossible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short chapter. No dialogue, just Bubba-rambling.

* * *

 

Bubba Gumball sat in the middle of his bed, under the canopy of heavy pink velvet.

 _So luxurious_ , Marshall had once said in that way, using that voice which threatened to break at every syllable but always managed to keep its mellow depth. Gumball couldn’t help but love that voice, even if at times that tone came out mocking, he loved the depth which seemed almost impossible for someone so slight of frame. He loved that voice which was so smooth, yet rough at the same time: crooning, like velvet itself—or smooth and harsh like scotch whiskey or smooth and thick like liquid caramel in the back of your throat…

How childish it would have been, if he were to go over to his collection and put on one of those old records just to hear it…just to hear him _sing_.

Bubba sighed and fell onto his back. There was a journal beside him, on the bed, and a pen but he hadn’t been able to open the cover of the book. There were entries there from his personal life, from past lives, there were details of nights spent with Marshall Lee that had taken place centuries ago, and details of nights spent without him—alone, or with others.

It had been a long time since he’d cared much about his personal life. Work, The Kingdom: It was all-consuming. There had been a period though, where he’d thought about finding a wife, or making one. That way he’d never have to be alone and if anyone had ever asked any questions about him and his priorities they would be quieted.

Take a Queen, become King, maybe even produce an heir—if it was even possible, he didn’t know. Sometimes he ached for such a pretty little picture, and other times it repulsed him completely. Who needed an heir when you planned on living forever?

It hurt him not to know what he felt about it now. He thought about having someone at his side and that someone was Marshall Lee. But that was only _now_ , only temporary. When he thought about Marshall Lee at his side, it would be to have him at his side in this bed, or even more simply just in this room. What about a future? What about at Kingdom parties? What about royal receptions? What about…?

Marshall Lee was a vampire. Prince of the Nightosphere, King of the Vampires. Marshall Lee was not a _woman_. He was so many things all rolled into one and no small part of who he was, was this neglected responsibility to his kingdom. There may very well come a time when floating around and drinking blood and sucking out the colour of the stupider candy-people who went outside the walls at night would not be enough to keep him wanting to stay in Ooo. There may very well come a time when Bubba Gumball wouldn’t be enough to keep him from doing what he had been made to do all along.

Bubba groaned aloud. What was he thinking? That if this relationship wasn’t good enough, that Marshall would find validation elsewhere? Knowing Marshall, he wouldn’t find this validation in the arms of another, no. He would…what? Go back to the Nightosphere, be the demon finally and be the end to all Bubba had built?

It was impossible. Marshal…Marshall _loved_ …

Something in him tightened. He felt sick, suddenly. Marshall had said it, hadn’t he; that he loved him? Love. What a concept.

They _had been_ in love. In so many ways, Gumball could tell himself that he loved the boy even still and it would be true but there was something in his brain that stopped his heart from swelling with the notion of love.

This time. This was the second love between them. He knew, even on his most hopeful mediations, how this would end: that they would not be together forever, that Marshall would not be accepted into this kingdom. Marshall had these romantic ideas of their friendship being something that could exist beyond the social protocol, beyond the aristocracy and patriarchy and royal mumbo-jumbo that currently governed his life, but did Bubba really and truly want that kind of relationship? Marshall seemed to think that it was all such a burden that had to be bared and that the value of their relationship was an escape to that protocol, and even if sometimes it was overwhelming, what the vampire failed to remember was that Bubba had built this life for himself because it was what he had wanted. He had created this kingdom and this community precisely because he wanted to be in the centre of it all, and he loved being the ruler of this place as much as he had loved the simplicity of kicking back and listening to music in that cave. When he had imagined a companion for himself in the past, that companion had always been able fit into this regal life. He did love Marshall Lee, but there would be a time when their kind of love wouldn’t be enough for him.

Bubba hated himself to think it. He hated himself to think that after all of this, after all this time fearing what he had just thought a moment ago—that without Bubba in his life, Marshall would be free to do his demonic duty—that it was in fact he himself, despite all he felt for the boy, who couldn’t conceive of a future with him.

The Kingdom was taking off. He needed to govern it properly. Even these past few days, it had been difficult to manage the needs of his kingdom and the needs of his heart and the fragility of this new relationship. Spending the other night with Marshall _had_ been nice: he had loved listening to music and drinking the tea the vampire had made for him. He had loved that little cave house and its quietness and their peace. He had loved every second of being pinned on his back on that sofa, feeling the weight of that boy on top of him and that cold skin and that thrilling, hungry mouth pressed so hard against his own—whatever it had really represented. It had been good, then, and if somehow despite the fragility of what they now had, this could be maintained as something equally as good….then what? Would that even be enough?

It was enough, yes. It was wonderful, but for how long?

A year? Ten years? No. How long could they continue being kids like this together, making-out and listening to records? Marshall would say that it never had to end, that it could be this way always because he was so romantic in that sense—yes, just easy and simple, kiss me every night forever and life will go on—he’d never been interested in marriage, he would never need an heir: what was the point of being so young and immortal if not to retain just a little of this youthful naiveté? Yes, it could go on forever. It _could_. 

 It _was_ good. He told himself it was good because that was true. He told himself he loved the vampire because that was true as well. What could the danger be in letting this be good for a little while longer? What good would it be to break this off now, when both of them so desperately needed a little congeniality in their lives?

 _Let it be good_. Those could have been Marshall’s words: _let it be good_.

He rolled over, wishing that Marshall could be there with him in this large bed. He wished for just one night here in the kingdom together, and that he might fall asleep with his cheek on that hard chest.

He sat up in his bed, reached for the journal and put it away. No need to write any of this down—that would just wreck it. No need to leaf through those pages and stir up anything else. He put these things away in the drawer of his nightstand and as he reached to do so, caught sight of that black t-shirt that had been folded there for quite some time.

 He hesitated, as if touching a relic, and then picked it up, felt the softness of well-worn and seldom-washed cotton and brought it to his face but smelled only himself. Smiling despite all he felt, he stood and undressed, leaving his clothes in a heap on the floor before him and pulled the black t-shirt over his head and crawled back into bed, alone.

_Let it be good._

 

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We know how you spend your evenings, Bubba...
> 
> *Scribbles Mrs. Bubba Abadeer in all the margins of his diary*


	11. Palpitation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Marshall shows himself to be something of a real vampire after all, which I'm sure all you little weirdos are gonna just love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey so I was supposed to upload this on Monday, but I lied! I have work-related excuses on hand, should you require them. Also: yay for inconsistent formatting and horrendous chapter names, wooo!

* * *

 

Marshall sat on the lumpy, threadbare booth seat of Fionna’s dining table. She sat on the other side of him, and there on the table between them lay five hundred millilitres of her blood in a plastic bag.

Fionna sat back. Marshall felt her watching him, heard her sigh. There was a bubble in the bag, and it moved with the table when she lifted her arms from it.  

“Well I don’t care,” she said.

He looked up at her, at the hair poking out from under that hat strapped under her chin, at her round and still-childish face. She was absolutely innocent of all the connotations of what Marshall was faced with now, although she seemed to take his need for advice to heart and sat there frowning, lips pursed and cheek dimpled on one side as she seemed to consider his dilemma. She crossed her arms comfortably.  

“It’s fucked up,” he said.

She nodded, stared at the bag then looked at Marshall and shrugged. “I guess. A bit,” she shrugged again. “Whatever.”

Marshall had taken this thing with him at Gumball’s request.

 _Just think about it_ , he’d said. _If you like it, you can have more._

If only all things in life were so simple.

He had taken the bag in a cloth tote and flown almost absently in the direction of his cave as if with an armload of groceries before he realized that he was headed home with the intention to—to what? Put this in a glass and actually drink it?

He hadn’t wanted to drink it in front of Gumball. He wasn’t even really sure that he wanted to drink it all, but to do it in front of him would have been just too much: vulgar, for one thing, and impolite. Even though he had been called _crass_ on more than one occasion, he was never one to make his friends uncomfortable on purpose. Bubba had never been accepting of this part of him, and to have him come forth with this in hand on his very own was almost more than Marshall himself could accept.

But if he _was_ going to drink this, he knew that really didn’t want to drink this alone. He saw a vision of himself, standing in his kitchen—shoes on still, cloth bag thrown on the counter, house too quiet, hands too eager. He saw himself standing there, deciding if he should empty it into a cup or just bite through the plastic. He had imagined the mess of using his teeth, squeezing the blood through holes in thick polyethylene, sharp plastic cutting the corners of his mouth as he sucked on cold chemical in lieu of real flesh—no.

He imagined himself using his kitchen scissors—the sharp ones with the orange handle—and snipping off the top of the bag where the hookup for an IV would be inserted. Pour this blood into a mug, lick a thumb that caught the last of it on the edge of plastic and lean the rest against the inside of the sink, slumped, but not spilling.

Microwave? No, it might coagulate. Heat it on the stovetop? What if he accidentally let it boil, what if he heated it too fast and it cooked? Double-boiler then, _bain marie_. Ridiculous. Drink it cold.  

What if it was bad, though? What if he got sick from it? What if it was full of chemicals to keep it emulsified? What if it had been frozen and that ruined it for drinking? What if he would taste the colour before the blood and it would be too bitter? What if it was undrinkable? _Cold_ blood?

But what if it was good?

What if he made a mess of himself? What if he was greedy for it and it dripped down his chin like a monster in an old-world movie? What if he wanted more, even after this was done? Go back to Bubba: ask for more.

No. He didn’t want to do this alone, but he absolutely did not want to do this in front of _him_ either. Bubba hadn’t exactly been out of line in making this offer, but there was something just so _not right_ about it; he didn’t _know_ what human blood was to creatures such as Marshall.

Sure, go ahead and clone Fionna’s blood, but don’t manufacture the stuff and make vampire-juice-boxes—

Marshall groaned.

“This is fucked up,” he said again. “I can’t…” he looked at the girl. This was _her_ blood, and yet it wasn’t. Did it belong to her, since Bubba had made it from her and for her? Or if it had been done with his knowledge and technology and foresight, did it belong to Bubba? And if so, was it his right to choose what was to be done with it?

“He had no right to give this to me,” he breathed.

Fionna shook her head, put her arm up over the back of her chair. “Whatever, I told you I don’t care. I think it’s cool he did it…I mean, why not, right? It’s not like he did it thinking of you, he cloned it for me…and then you came along. I guess you might as well drink it.”

Marshall nodded, unsure.

“Do you think it’ll taste like me?” She asked.

Marshall looked up at her again, and again he saw her innocence.

“I sincerely hope not,” he said quickly, “Glob, Fionna, I don’t want to know what you…” he shook his head. “No.”

She shrugged. “It probably does. It’s not like it’s a synthetic substitute, it’s _cloned_. I mean, however they were generated, those _are_ human blood cells—and plasma, or whatever.”

Marshall held his head in his hands.

“This is human blood,” he said, to himself and to her. He heard Fionna’s chair scrape on the floor as she got up. How long had it been since he’d tasted this? How many years?

Fionna hummed.  

“It’s not like animal blood,” he said. “It’s not like colour. It’s not just…a craving or a hunger pang this is _human_ blood…and if it tastes like you? You have no idea what this does to me Fionna.”

“You’re being dramatic,” she said, and he heard the click of her little shoes on the wood floor as she went into the kitchen. He heard the clink of dishes.

“I’m not,” he muttered. “I’m a demon. This? This is what _makes_ me a demon.”

“This is what makes you dramatic.”

“I can’t do it if it’s going to taste like you. I don’t want to know what you taste like.”

“Don’t make me blush,” she called from the kitchen.

He glanced up as she stood on toes in her short skirt and socks to reach in a cupboard and his mouth went dry. She lifted a knee onto the counter, shifted weight, reached. He watched her every move, breathing only to smell the life that infected this house.

There was a lot of thigh to this girl, and she wasn’t shy about showing it either. He knew that the skin there would be so warm; fragrant flesh. He looked away.   

It was hopeless: his hands shook, he knew that he couldn’t waste this blood, he knew he what he was going to do. He buried his head in arms folded over the table.

He was weak.

There was a thud on the table and Marshall looked up to see a little pyrex mug before him and Fionna with a pair of scissors in her right hand.

“Not if it tastes like you,” he said again, looking up at her.  

It baffled him to see her smile.

“There’s only one way to find out though, right?”  

 

* * *

 

Gumball woke to a tap on his window. It was late enough that he assumed the first time it was just the beginnings of a heavy rain, but the second triple-set of _tap-tap-tapping_ woke him fully with a start.

He sat up in bed, stared at the stained glass and saw the outline of head and shoulders. His heart raced, short of breath as if he had woken from a nightmare and debated whether or not he should shut his eyes tight and pretend to sleep just a little longer, but that silhouette was just too haunting and even though it could only be one person, Gumball was officially spooked.

Marshall had left the lab with such a broken look on his face, and Gumball couldn’t deal with the thought of him returning to say that the blood had been bad, or that it had been a bad idea. He’d thought of it only after seeing the hickey, after it had dawned on him that the hunger for blood must still exist for Marshall. He was a little embarrassed to have played the role of mad scientist, or to have seemed to, when it was Glob’s honest truth that the cloning of her blood had never been intended for Marshall at all.

He stared at the shadow as he slowly got out of bed and made his way to the window. His hands shook, hesitating to unhook that tiny little latch keeping both panes closed.

A hand rested on the other side of the glass, gently, patiently acknowledging what stood between them and Gumball let out a ragged breath and opened the window.

With the freshness of the night welcomed into the Prince’s quarters, Marshall stayed where he floated and simply looked at him. He didn’t say anything, but stared, met his eyes with a searching that was impossibly innocent, and with brows raised and knit together he seemed so full of apology, and apprehension.

“I’m sorry,” Gumball said before Marshall could. He gave his head a gentle shake, letting his hands rest on the windowsill. “I didn’t mean to put you on the spot like that. It was unfair.”

Marshall shook his head, he didn’t say anything, just licked his lips in that delicate way of his and looked at both their hands on the hard, fondant sill.

Gumball cleared his throat. “You can come in,” he said gently, stepping out of the way to allow it.

Marshall seemed to hesitate, but looked Gumball over and must have seen how the chill of the night was uncomfortable on his bare legs and entered the room, landing on the carpet as soon as he was through the window. He stood awkwardly, unsure for a moment what to do, and then turned and took the liberty to close the window behind him. He moved slowly, but not in such a way that indicated he was distracted; he moved slowly, but his movements were precise. He didn’t seem to notice that Gumball wore his old t-shirt.

Gumball knew that despite how he felt for this boy, the last person he should ever feel uncomfortably exposed in front of would be Marshall Lee. He stood there, in that faded black t-shirt and pink underpants, thankful that the draft had been shut out.

“Marshall,” he said gently, “you’re scaring me a little. Say something.”

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Marshall muttered. He turned, gaze met again, but Marshall was too intense.

“Marshall?”

The vampire shook his head and Gumball’s heart tripped. The first time he’d said it had been more of a prompt than anything, but Marshall’s persistent silence and this unfocused—or too-focused—intensity about him was more than a little off-putting.

“You drank it,” Gumball all but breathed. His heart rate picked up, Marshall looked at the floor, his head turned toward the prince, quite obviously listening. “Marshall?”

Marshall looked up at him, sharply, startled by the volume of Gumball’s voice.

“Glob Marshall, you’re freaking me out!” He said at a normal volume, as if the whole castle wasn’t asleep in rooms beyond. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I drank the blood,” Marshall said slowly. “I…I drank…she…” he blinked, shook his head.

“Who?” Gumball asked. His voice broke.

Marshall shook his head again. “Fionna. She…I went to see her, I had to tell her—”

“Marshall, you didn’t!” Gumball gasped. “Ohmyglob, Marshall, please tell me you didn’t—”

“She didn’t care,” Marshall said quietly. He turned, seemed to look for a place to sit and then walked over to the bed and sat there, stepping over the clothes that remained on the floor.

Gumball cleared his throat, his embarrassment somewhat neutralized by his concern for his friend.

“She’s fine,” Marshall said, voice low, “I didn’t do anything. I know that’s what you’re thinking.”

Gumball was relieved that he hadn’t had to ask.

“But…it…it tasted like her, it _did_ …” Marshall nearly whispered. “Just…just like how she smells, how I always thought—how I remember—”

Gumball checked the urge to apologize again. He knew endlessly apologizing would do nobody any good. He cleared his throat, went out on a limb, sat beside Marshall and let his own naked leg rest against that cool denim.

Marshall looked at his leg, pushed air out through his nose and ran his fingers lightly over Gumball’s pink skin. It tickled a little and the prince shivered. Marshall sighed.

“You’re not here to ask me why I gave it to you in the first place,” Gumball guessed, trying his best to keep his tone light. He looked at the boy’s face and saw—finally—a tired little smile and a reason for him to believe that the blood hadn’t driven him mad. He felt immense relief and even laughed despite himself, taking a huge leap of faith to rest his head on Marshall’s shoulder. Marshall allowed it, even shifted to make it more comfortable

“I don’t know how it’s possible that you’re taking this so lightly,” he muttered. 

Gumball thought before answering. “Maybe I’ve grown up a bit.”

“Maybe I’ve brainwashed you.”

Gumball smiled to hear the smile in Marshall’s gentle voice, but his gut was still twisted with worry.

“You _are_ a fugitive from the Nightosphere,” Gumball said, heart tripping to open this kind of dialogue with the creature who had power enough to bring everything he had built to ruin.

He sighed, and banished his own thoughts.

“It does things to me,” Marshall said softly.

Gumball didn’t know what that meant, didn’t even know how to begin to decipher it.

“What things?” He asked simply.

Marshall made a little noise, and then avoided answering the question he himself had led the conversation to.

“But this…it’s not real,” he said instead, “I’m not hurting anyone. I have to get my head around that because it tastes just like the real thing. Only…only it’s…it doesn’t _move_ —it…”

Gumball was quiet as Marshall struggled and eventually sighed and moved on.

“If I’m drinking the blood you give me,” he said, “you’ll know for certain that I’m…”

Gumball hummed as the tone became more serious again.

“Yes,” he agreed gently. He sat up straight, met Marshall’s eyes again. “I said before that it is in my best interest to keep you interested in blood. Not just for me, but…but for my people, too. You understand.”

Marshall nodded, looked away and smirked when he had every right to be offended.

“Pusher,” he muttered.

“Junkie,” Bubba shot back without missing a beat.

Marshall closed his eyes, smile transforming his face and he laughed, showing teeth as he did and then groaned.

“I don’t suppose you have any more, do you?” He asked, flashing eyes on Gumball again. Gumball smiled and maintained the eye-contact. “Or am I going to have to start paying for this?”

“I’m sure we can work something out,” Gumball said, smiling just enough to let Marshall know that he wasn’t being too serious. He leaned in and glanced at greyish lips, expecting Marshall to draw away and tell him again that it couldn’t be that way anymore, but the vampire smiled patiently, and accepted a kiss that Gumball decided instead to gently press on his cheek.

 

* * *

 

Gumball sat on the white tile floor of his lab with his back against the leg of a stainless steel work-desk. Marshall sat on the floor opposite him, one of those five-hundred millilitre bags empty on the floor beside him and another on the table just above his head.

Marshall had drunk that blood in front of him. It had taken some convincing that it was perfectly alright, that Gumball wasn’t going to be offended by the act of drinking human blood. Gumball wouldn’t dare use the word _fascinated_ to describe how he felt in watching it, but for all that Marshall meant to him as a person, it was a gripping spectacle to see the effect it produced in him.

Not that Gumball had never seen him feed before. He’d seen him suck the colour from fruit, he’d even caught him in the act of taking it out of _people_ —candy-people—and he had felt the sensation of having colour drawn from him as well, but he’d never seen him drink blood.

Before he’d done it, Gumball sensed that he was being allowed to witness something that very few had been allowed to walk away from. There was maybe an intimacy in being let to watch, which was why he’d wanted to see it in the first place, and probably why Marshall had seen fit to allow it given these odd circumstances.

But it was only cloned blood in a plastic bag. Marshall had cut it open, emptied it into a beaker and warmed it with Gumball’s instruction over a double boiler. Marshall had tapped his fingers impatiently against his own arm as he waited for the little thermometer to read 99 degrees, and by that point even Gumball could smell the sickly metallic odour of something meaty and saline.

That this was _human_ blood had very little significance to Bubba—Fionna was the only human he knew—maybe it would mean more if he considered that this might as well have been the blood of their friend, but he wasn’t really thinking in those terms so much as he wondered why Marshall seemed so caught up in the fact that it was human, and not animal. Sure, Marshall himself was half human, and that probably had something to do with the hunger, but who was to say a human being was worth any more than any other animal? Gumball knew lots of animals who were at least as smart as Fionna, and some were even more articulate.

Gumball knew though, that when Marshall said the word _human_ , he really meant _people_. To him, the words were interchangeable, even after all these years. To him, this human blood was the embodiment of his desire—not only to satiate just his hunger, but also his desire for both Fionna as possibly the last human being in Ooo, and the desire for the colour in Gumball’s cheeks which would be equally as palatable. Gumball knew that because of his physicality, he was just “human” enough to pass into Marshall’s idea of personhood; it was for that reason that they had been close at all.

Gumball watched with a cool detachment as Marshall warmed this blood to the body temperature of a human being and then lifted that glass beaker to his lips to drink. Prince Gumball had seen more bizarre sights in his long life than a vampire drinking blood.

Marshall had drunk it all down quickly and then groaned. Gumball watched, unsure what to do as he whined, he made his hands into fists and pressed them to his head, going down eventually with elbows on the stainless table-top, cringing and breathing deep despite how he didn’t need to breathe air to live.

Gumball didn’t know very much about the science of vampirism, but being allowed to witness this reaction did give him some insight: he theorized that the significance of drinking human blood was in its ability to be absorbed into the circulatory system of the affected undead. With enough human blood from a live host, Marshall Lee might even gain a little colour and human warmth to his otherwise greyish skin.   

He had watched, absolutely fascinated despite his friend’s obvious discomfort. He watched Marshall crouch, knees bent, hands sliding to hold onto the edge of the table as he appeared to simply hang there, breathing air through clenched teeth, eyes shut tight. Gumball made mental notes that he would later transfer into a notebook; maybe he could write a paper on the subject.

“Do…do you want more?” Gumball had asked, unsure if he should be nervous then, or just sympathetic through his curiosity.

Marshall had groaned. “Maybe…maybe…just…”

And now the two sat on the floor, Marshall having gone through his pain without explanation as to why he had felt it, or what it had meant. To Gumball’s questions, he said nothing, and simply sat for the longest time, head on his knees, arms drawn in to his chest as he seemed to struggle to breathe. Any time Marshall had ever taken a breath before, it had been a deliberate thing—like to speak or smell something in the air—but when asked, he gave no answers as to why he felt the urge to force air into his lungs now. Gumball assumed it had something to do with the fresh, compatible blood in his system.  

So Gumball waited, sitting on the floor opposite him, listening quietly, just existing quietly in proximity to his suffering friend, until the breathing became less frantic and became shallow, eventually stopping altogether so that Marshall sat still.

Marshall groaned low and long, hugging his arms tight to his chest and stomach and slowly let himself lay against the cool, white tile of the lab floor. The light was bright, and Gumball was sorry for its harshness, but he wasn’t about to sit there on the cold floor in the dark, so he left it on. He simply sat there, not knowing what to say or what to do, except that he knew he couldn’t leave.

Three am came and went. Four am brought a wave of dread, something like slow panic in his heart that selfishly made him fear the coming of dawn more than anything.

 _No sleep. Another full day of responsibility not even started and I’m already exhausted_. 

He knew his thoughts were selfish, but as he shifted on the uncomfortable floor, he couldn’t help but pity a future self that would lose steam before noon. He had a conference call with the Fire Kingdom that afternoon, he couldn’t push something like that.

 _Junkie vampire_. Gumball thought, letting himself look at this boy in a heap on the floor in front of him. He didn’t seem uncomfortable, didn’t seem to notice how cold the tile was against his bare arm; didn’t care if it was dirty as he laid his cheek there too. Gumball wondered if this what happened every time and why it had made him so sick. Why had he _wanted_ more, even after the pain had started?

He said the boy’s name quietly.

“Are you sick?” Gumball asked as gently as he could manage.

Marshall groaned.

“Marshall? Are you sick? If you’re sick, maybe I can help you.”

Marshall groaned.

“Did you know it would do this to you?”

Marshall didn’t say anything. He shifted, but no sound came from him.

Gumball sighed. “If you knew it was going to do this to you, why did you drink it? Why did you drink so much? Animal blood doesn’t do this to you. Colour doesn’t do this to you.”

Marshall was silent. He was still.

“This is silly, at least come upstairs, you can sit in a chair instead of a heap on the floor, come on,” Gumball sighed, and moving to stand he saw Marshall shift his face under his arm and the Candy Prince stopped short. “Marshall?”

Silence, but this time, he saw the shoulders move, saw a little shake.

“Marshall?” He took a step, towering over this heap of a murderous Nightosphere-demon-punk-rocker, and when he realized that he was crying, he knelt on the floor at his side.

The crying was silent, shoulders convulsing a little as if the emotion was trying to force itself out of him. Gumball knelt on the hard tile and reached, laying a hand on Marshall’s back where his thin t-shirt was stretched over shoulder blades.

“Hey,” he said softly, “Marshall…what’s….” he swallowed, hesitated when Marshall seemed to tighten, bringing his knees up to his chest as he lay on the side, his feet in those canvas shoes of his curled in like the feet of a child and Gumball was at a loss. “Are you sick?”

Marshall drew a breath to speak, but it came out ragged and caught on a sob he had no doubt tried to supress. Unseen, Gumball cringed, closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“Come on,” he said gently, “let’s go on upstairs, alright? You and me, we can sit on the carpet, come on.” He stood, but remained stooped, elbows on his knees and sighed when Marshall didn’t speak after all. “Come on,” he said again, reaching to take hold of a thin arm, trying to draw him up but Marshall was as solid as marble, and just as immovable. Gumball sighed again and stood straight.

“I don’t know how to take care of a sick vampire,” Gumball said at a normal speaking volume. “And I can’t help you if you don’t communicate. Do you want more? Is that it? Or should I get something else for you?”

Marshall said nothing.

“Fine then, I’m going to go and get—”

There was another sobbing breath and Marshall pressed the palm of his hand flat on the floor. Without saying a word, he shifted, lifted himself up and stood, although swaying, before Gumball and keeping his head down, he nodded.

“Do you want—”

“No,” Marshall said, voice deep and barely audible. He shook his head. “You should get to bed. The sun is coming up.”

“It’s four-thirty,” Gumball protested gently, taking that arm and leading the vampire out of the room. He followed, seeming dazed but he no longer cried, and Gumball was relieved to see that despite whatever emotion he had spent, there had been no blood tears and that Marshall’s face and the floor were both clean.

“The sun…” Marshall said as he was led out of the laboratory. They stood in the hall while Gumball locked the doors.

“Yes Marshall,” Gumball said softly, leading him again by the elbow. It was an effort not to look at Marshall’s face, but it seemed like something of a transgression to try and read him now: like looking in his eyes might be a violation, and that Marshall was looking away now precisely because he didn’t want to be seen.

“You can stay here today if you’re worried about it. I don’t want you to try flying home if you don’t think you can make it.”

Marshall didn’t reply, but Gumball assumed the words had been heard.

The hall seemed so pleasantly dim after the lab, but the quietness was unnerving. In the distance, he heard the clanking of kitchen-things, and beyond the castle walls the very first birds began to sing. The sky wasn’t yet light, but the early summer-time dawn was indeed coming.

Unlocking his bedroom door with a key, Gumball led Marshall inside, coaxing him in with a hand at the boy’s back, a gesture that felt oddly intimate even though he was getting annoyed with the persistent silence, if not a little more worried.

Gumball closed the door behind him and Marshall stopped, moving in such a way as to put himself directly behind the prince and drew close. Gumball allowed the proximity and felt a little rush of adrenaline that could have been either fear or anticipation; but instead of embracing him, Marshall just sort of leaned with his forehead against Gumball’s shoulder and rested there.

Gumball found himself smiling. He sighed, turned and put his arm around Marshall’s shoulders, holding him and accepting with a sharp little noise of surprise at the arms that wound around his waist and chest, pulling him in for a tight embrace after all. Immediately, it was almost too tight.

“Come on now,” Gumball said gently, patting Marshall’s shoulder as he cleared his throat. “You can sleep in the bed, I have to get up soon anyway…”

Marshall only squeezed, stepping into the embrace that was becoming alarmingly desperate, and Gumball let out another little noise of discomfort as he tried in vain to get one hand between Marshall’s chest and his. The hand at the small of his back was unrelenting, and he heat came up into Gumball’s face and his heart skipped a beat when cold breath was released against his collarbone.

“Marshall,” Gumball tried to keep his voice even, tried to speak with an authoritative tone. Any other time, this unexplained little assault would have made him angry and it should have been easy to snap at him now; but his voice broke to say his name and receiving no reply, Gumball swore on a rushed breath when he felt the unresponsive Marshall Lee turn his face and breathe in deep just under his ear.

Gumball stammered his name again, but it fell on deaf ears. Marshall gave a little groan, and as strong and as unforgiving as the grip of a serpent, his arms seemed to wind tighter with Gumball’s struggle. Gumball lifted his head high over Marshall’s shoulder in an attempt to draw a full breath, and moving in automatic fashion, the vampire tucked into the crook of his neck and shoulder and then he stopped.

Marshall had frozen. Gumball froze too, afraid to draw even half a breath for fear of the grip tightening. That head of hair—that black fur—was pressed up against his cheek, tickling his nose and he could smell that deliciously savoury animal smell from him, while beyond he could see through the murky dark of his room that the stained glass window was just slightly coloured from the palest light of pre-dawn. He closed his eyes, heart racing, wondering what he had done, or what he had done wrong, and how he could have maybe helped or if he never should have invited Marshall in tonight when he’d hesitated at that window.

He let out his held breath and breathed his name.

“Mar—”    

And the rest of the breath was knocked out of him and he found himself pressed hard against his own bedroom door, Marshall’s hands like fists of iron gripping the front of his shirt, holding him there and pressing with hips against his in a way that Gumball might have fantasized about in the week past. A hand slid down across his chest and stomach to hold his hip, indicating that the pressure there was deliberate, and he heard and felt and cringed against the nose and lips and lusty breath at the side of his neck. He felt a kiss there, felt a tongue.

Now that this roughness was real, it was a terror.

He let out a strangled cry and Marshall let out something of a low, throaty growl with that beautiful baritone voice of his, and refusing to feel that heat rise in him, Gumball acted with a burst of adrenaline, taking the vampire by the front of the shirt in just the same way, and shoved him off with all his strength.

Marshall stood apart from him finally, dark eyes looking at him finally, mouth half open and dopey, shoulders slumped as he seemed to just stumble dumbly backward.

“Snap out of it!” Gumball nearly yelled the words, not caring if he woke up the whole castle. He didn’t care if someone came rushing in and saw this: he would not be treated this way.

“You do _not_ get to do that to me. Do you understand?”                

Marshall blinked. Swallowed. His arms fell at his sides and he seemed to really see Gumball for the first time since they’d left the laboratory.

Marshall’s eyes widened. He took a step back, then looked back over his shoulder to the window and began to speak but found no words. He took a deep breath and forced it out as though fighting panic and Gumball stood before him nearly glad to see that pain in his friend’s eyes for what he might have done. And not knowing if he should feel angry or scared or betrayed or all of it at once, he knew as well that regardless of what he felt, he couldn’t simply throw Marshall out of the castle to meet the sun—no matter what his intentions had really been.  

Gumball motioned to the bed. Seething—angry and hurt—it was all he could do to speak.

“The curtains are light-proof,” he said. “Velvet.”

Marshall stammered something apologetic, but Gumball didn’t want to hear it. He shook his head.

“Sleep. And Glob help me Marshall, if you’re not here when I get back—we’ll talk tonight.”

Again Marshall stammered. “B…Bubba, Glob, I—where are you going?”

Gumball shrugged off his robe, making his way to his ensuite without looking back to see that pitiful expression. He felt dirty and he hoped Marshall did too.

“I need to take a fucking shower.”

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got a bit fed up with this chapter. I've been not so inspired lately, even though I have a few ideas buzzing around so that's why you might see some lack of will to properly edit this chapter. But at least something finally almost happens, right!? The next chapters might get a little darker...we'll just have to wait and see what happens. 
> 
> Please folks, let me know what you think! What's working for you, what isn't? Do I blather on too much, do you just want some fucking action already?? Show me love and constructive criticism! Tell your friends and find me on Tumblr!


	12. Ally

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gumball is pissed. He doesn't think there's anything this emotional brat of a vampire can do to make it up to him, but more than crooning apologies, Marshall surprises him with a favour of a different nature--one which might just prove his salt to the Candy Prince and his beloved kingdom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...a little action? Maybe?

* * *

 

 Bubba Gumball took a deep breath. He tried to remain calm, but he had been trying all day to remain calm and that hadn’t done him any good when he’d only been seething over imaginary conversations in his head with that jelly-headed-fucking-blood-junkie of a space-cadet vampire forced to sunsleep in his very own bed.

Gumball had half a mind to storm up there and open the curtains, expose him to the sun just so Marshall would wake up and Gumball could slap him across his stupid face.

Glob-flipping-demon sonofabitch had done it again: shattering any hope Gumball had had that maybe Marshall wasn’t the son of a demon he had always made himself out to be. He called this _love_? If you love someone, you don’t try to eat them. If you love someone, you don’t push them up against the door and grind your hips on them just for a rush of colour and heat to whet your appetite. If you love someone, you don’t play their body like a _fucking game_ and growl demon lust to make the heart beat faster.

Marshall Lee was capable of love, sure, but he was capable of so much else, wasn’t he?

Bubba Gumball did not need this. Not today.

The conference call with the Fire Kingdom had not gone well. They wanted control over the Rock Candy Mountain region, citing the dense sugar crystals within that land as being a coveted source of slow-burning fuel for them. Bubba had of course refused to simply hand it over to them, thinking to himself that war would have been a last resort to any nation—even an evil kingdom wouldn’t waste the resources to go to war for any old thing—but with his attention so unfairly divided between his own kingdom and personal life, Gumball had failed to remember that the fire-people weren’t like any other species, in that their weapon was their own form, and that to use themselves by means of destruction, burning up the landscape as they could so easily do, in fact only augmented their strength. Where to fight back, Gumball would lose ammunition and man-power, the flame-people would only let loose and spread like…well, spread like _wild fire_ , and after everything Gumball put against them turned to flame, that flame would only serve his enemy’s purpose as it fed on the energy Gumball exerted to prevent it.

Of course it wasn’t hopeless. He just hoped he could manage to control the damage before it spread too far. Water—of course—would be their main defense, but if the entire mountainside was in flame, he didn’t think any of the candy-people would be able to get close enough to put it out before melting.

 It looked like it would be up to Gumball to save the day—again. He would have to don his thermal-regulator suit and fight this fire by himself. Convincing the flame-people not to go to war, not to take the opportunity to burn an adversary down and gain from the spoils was like…well, it was like saying _no_ to Marshall Lee.

Unfair. Marshall wouldn’t ever—

But he _had._

Almost.  

This was delicate. Gumball needed to get his head in the game.

He knew that before he had set up his kingdom, the powers of destruction had been great in the world. The Fire Kingdom, the Nightosphere and a handful of other evil little tribes had been working for centuries to—as Marshall had put it— _neutralize_ the damage past civilizations had caused the planet. Before Gumball, the plan had been quite simply to return the whole planet to the state it had been in before intelligent life.

Marshall had once explained in cryptic language that evil was only a point of view, and that anything which could be called evil for killing for the sake of killing, was really just romantic about the ideas of a peaceful, unpopulated planet.

Gumball hadn’t understood.

Gumball wracked his brain. If demons and flame-people and all those others only wanted a neutral planet, his being allowed to set up shop here must have been, for what? Curiosity? Weakness? Why had they let him continue? Was it because the candy-people didn’t have souls? No, of course they did—Marshall had said so. So the candy-people were not neutral, but they were probably the closest thing to it that a consumer could be.

Where was he going with this?

The flame-people: why? Why had they let him carry on if they could have come along like this any time and declared war? Why now? He had always assumed they’d had a truce: unspoken, but bonding.

Maybe it was a test. Gumball couldn’t fight back, or else they would see him as a real enemy. Maybe this was a way to test the truce, maybe he needed to give them something in order to secure his Kingdom…no. That was ridiculous. Besides, inside the city walls, the candy-people were not weak. At least not with the Gumball Guardians on their side.

Realistically though, Gumball knew he would stand no chance if the flame-people really did want to burn everything he had built to the ground, his kingdom was really very simple and they’d always been so careful not to overstep their boundaries in a world Gumball had never had illusions about owning: he shared this land.

Share. Maybe that was it. Maybe they could come up with some kind of deal and work together. He needed to meet the Flame King in person, and discuss this in a rational way. Bring some kind of peace offering or something.

The day had felt so long but already the sun was setting and Gumball couldn’t quite believe it. He had received that scheduled phone call at precisely three in the afternoon, and already the sky was warming to deeper shades of pink and orange at the horizon.  If there was going to be an attack, it would be at night when the magnitude of their power would be seen in the distance by every person in the common realm of Ooo.

Gumball didn’t know if the attack would be tonight. He didn’t know what they were planning at all, but if they wanted something and had an excuse to burn hot, Gumball wasn’t going to hope for any moderation.

Of course these things always came up suddenly. Of course they always happened at the most inconvenient time.

He couldn’t just leave the castle. He couldn’t go without at least leaving a note but if Marshall was given the opportunity, he would run away for probably another two hundred years and then come back after it had all simmered down and kiss him at the same window again.

Gumball shook his head. He organized his papers, told Peppermint Maid to get his thermal-regulating suit and to call Lord Monochromicorn and tell him to get ready for battle. Better call Fionna too.

Gumball took a deep breath outside his bedroom door. Unlocking it with a key, he stepped inside cautiously and immediately felt the chilling sensation that he was being watched. It was like being in a room with a ghost, knowing that there was _something_ there, but that the _something_ was not alive.

Marshall’s energy was absolutely electric, but Gumball only saw it as another dark facet to the things that put Marshall on his blacklist.

Demon energy.

“Wake up,” Gumball said loudly and slamming his door behind him, knowing well enought that the vampire would not wake up so easily. Raising his voice to him, even though he wouldn’t hear it, had felt good for maybe half a second before he felt foolish for it. He sighed.

He walked around the canopied bed and stood where the curtains met in the middle, tied from the inside with a bit of ribbon to keep as much light as possible out. He only ever drew the curtains of this bed himself if it struck his fancy to nap during the day—which was rare—or in even rarer cases, to shut out the world that always seemed to demand so much from the cripplingly hung-over.  

The air in the room was a little stale because the window had been shut all day just as it was now. There was a faint pink glow to the room, faint light coming in through that thin coloured sugar-glass, but it would be enough to burn a vampire.

Gumball felt a surge of guilt for what he was about to do, but feeling guilty only pissed him off.

He told himself that Marshall deserved at least a little sunburn, not only for the way he had treated him, but for the hell Gumball had been through all day thinking about it.

It was like reaching into a strange animal’s cage, to slip his hand between the curtains to grope blindly for the little ribbon Marshall must have tied before passing out. He pulled the string and let out his breath, holding the edge of the curtain in both his hands and before he could second-guess himself, he pulled them open quickly and stepped back.

He almost expected to find the bed empty, for Marshall to have somehow slipped out of the castle while Gumball had tried to clear his head in the shower, but that simply wasn’t the case. Marshall was there alright, but he had fallen to his forced unconsciousness in an odd position. He had been kneeling, arms tucked in between his chest and legs, and his forehead lay against the pillow, his hands clutching the back of his neck.

Gumball couldn’t imagine the despair Marshall must have felt, falling asleep in such a positon. He almost felt bad for the vampire, but not quite.

He didn’t burn instantly. Gumball stood back, looking out the window at the fading light and hoping that this wouldn’t take too long. It was no more than a minute before the skin on the back of Marshall’s hands turned a sickly darkish sort of red—like a bruise—and then darkened to deep purple underneath before searing in the light of day.

Gumball made a face and swallowed hard, drawing the curtains shut as soon as he saw that skin really start to burn—and not just a simple sunburn, but really _burn_ like meat on a charcoal grill.

There was a sound of cloth moving from inside, then a low groan and something of a hiss like a sharp breath being drawn in and then Marshall awoke while Gumball cringed, crying out in pain and confusion.

“I’m here, Marshall,” Gumball said, standing on the other side of the curtain. He knew he should have apologized, but he did not want to give off the impression that anything had been forgiven during the course of the day.

Marshall hissed pain from inside the shadowed bed. Gumball hoped despite everything that the wound would heal quickly for him.

“I have to go,” Gumball said. “I just woke you up to tell you that I’m leaving. I need to go provide aid to the Rock Candy Mountain people.”

Marshall moaned. “Why?” He managed to ask.

Gumball shook his head. “There’s trouble.”

“Ahh—Glob—what trouble? What’s _this_ urgent?!”

“I…” Gumball hesitated. Don’t apologize. “I didn’t want to hurt you, but I didn’t know how else to wake you.”

Marshall swore low. “What trouble?” He asked again. “Rock Candy Mountain….? Glob, Bubba…you burnt me…”

“That’s just it,” Gumball said quickly, “it’s the Flame King. I don’t have much time, I don’t know how rash he’s going to be. He wants the mountains for the sugar inside, he wants the fuel. I don’t know why _now_ , but we had a meeting today and he all but declared war if I didn’t hand over the territory.”

Marshall was quiet, save for the struggling sounds he made trying not to feel the pain.

His voice broke on a breath. “ _All but_ declared war?” He asked. “Did they or didn’t they?”

Gumball turned. He didn’t have time for this. “If they want the land they’ll take it. They owe me nothing. They know that in battle, there’s no contest outside the Candy Kingdom and the range of the Gumball Guardians. They could have taken it any time, really, I honestly don’t know why this had to happen today.”

Marshall groaned. “Give me your phone.”

“Pardon me?”

“Your phone, Bubba. I can handle this.”

There was sound of shifting again and Marshall opened the curtain just slightly. Gumball didn’t see him where he had retreated in the shadow, but he reached in his pocket anyway and drew out the little electronic device.

His heart leapt. There was no way. The Flame King wouldn’t back down on this, not if Gumball begged, and certainly not if his dark friend from the Nightosphere asked nicely.

But the alternative to giving Marshall a chance at this was imminent war.

“Use your own phone,” Gumball told him. “They’ll see my number.”

“We want them to see your number. Give me the phone, Bubba.”

There was an authority to that tone which Gumball almost couldn’t deny. It was as if Marshall was suddenly the Marshall of hundreds of years ago, the one that had really been king of something and not just the brat of a rockstar with some title he rarely needed to flaunt.

Gumball did as he was told. He really didn’t have anything to lose. So what if Flame King thought he had gone running to Marshall? How could it be bad for the Candy Prince to have an ally on the dark side? He passed the phone through the curtain, greyish fingers flashing deftly to pluck it from the beam of light and out of Gumball’s hand.

“Listen if you must,” Marshall said. “But you won’t like what you hear.”

Gumball said nothing. It felt like his heart was beating too fast and too slow at the same time as he listened to the electronic sound beyond the velvet drape. There was dialing: Marshall knew the number well enough not to have to look for it in Gumball’s contacts.

A voice on the other end spoke, but Marshall didn’t wait for it to say what it had wanted to say.

“Candy mountains? Are you fucking kidding me?” Marshall said. Gumball’s heart leapt. “For candy _fucking_ mountains you cross the line?” There was loud talking on the other end of the line, but Gumball couldn’t understand it. “It doesn’t fucking matter what I’m doing with it, you know the Candy Kingdom is mine—no! It doesn’t fucking matter, I told you. This is my bloody territory, Philip, and I can and will do whatever the hell I want with it.”

More talking on the other side. Marshall hummed, he grunted, he snorted.

“I own you,” Marshall said finally, “make no mistake: it doesn’t matter if I’m here or there, this territory is _mine_ and if you so much set one fucking twig aflame, I swear on my own still heart that I will come down there myself and extinguish you.”

Another grunt and there was some derisive little laugh. “I’ll savour him as long as I damned well please, Philip.” There was muted talking on the other end and Marshall laughed again but the tone had changed.

“…Let it melt…”

Gumball resisted the urge to clear his throat. Heat flared into his cheeks and he was quietly awed.

Marshall sighed. “No, fine,” he said. “But call it off. The territories stand, Phil. I can’t let you have the mountains, you have to call it off.” He hummed. “Okay…”

And quite suddenly the phone was thrust back through the curtains and Gumball snatched it up as Marshall cursed and withdrew quickly into the shadow.

“He wants to speak to you,” he said.

Gumball hesitated. He swallowed, but his mouth was dry and his hand trembled to lift the little phone to his ear. He didn’t know if he ought to sound commanding like he had earlier in the day, or if he ought to give into the fact that Marshall had won this battle for him.

“Hello?” He spoke as he would have spoken to anyone else.

“You’re lucky,” the voice on the other end said, the Flame King, Philip. “Count your blessings that he’s decided to keep you in the lifestyle to which you’ve become accustomed.”

Gumball couldn’t speak.

“But there will be a night when he decides to end this game, and on that night we will take what has been promised to us and _we will_ _burn it all.”_

There was a muffled little click and just as simple as that, the line went dead.

Gumball stood, unmoving, with the phone to his ear still and he could sense that Marshall was listening intently, waiting for him to say something. Gumball had absolutely no idea what to say.

It was over. Just like that: some harsh words, a little demon rank pulled and Gumball—who was now to be known to the whole underworld as Marshall Lee’s sweet little pink bitch—was off scott-free and nobody had to go to war.

“That’s…that’s it…” he said. His voice didn’t sound like his own voice, he heard it as if he had left his own body.

“Let me explain,” Marshall said quietly. “Please, Bubba…I can’t bear it if you think that I really—”

“Of course you don’t,” Gumball said on a rush of breath. He hadn’t believed that Marshall really thought he owned him, not for one second. If a demon thinks they own you, they don’t stop at pushing you up against a door. Gumball didn’t know much about demons in a social way, but he knew that much at least.

He understood the politics of what had just transpired, and while it might come back to bite him later, he had always regarded Marshall’s friendship as a political asset precisely for this reason. Maybe this was the first time he’d used Marshall’s influence in the underworld to his advantage, or maybe this was the only time he knew about. Had Marshall been making these claims all along? Had Marshall been protecting the Candy Kingdom by laying claim over this land?

Gumball didn’t like the idea, but if he were to think about this rationally, he could understand how these ancient immortals had divvied up the land before he ever built his kingdom walls. It wasn’t so much that Marshall had _let_ him build here, or that the demons had _let_ him exist, rather his territory here and Marshall’s existed simultaneously and separately, like on different planes of reality.

Marshall began to babble, trying to explain it in a similar way, but Gumball cut him off.

“I understand,” Gumball said softly. “Big _big_ picture stuff.” It made his stomach flip to think of it in this way, because the connotation was that there would be a day when Gumball wouldn’t exist at all, and even the Candy Kingdom would pass under just like any other civilization had before it. Even after everything was gone, Marshall would still exist and this land would be his as it had always been and it would be then that this score would be settled—it was a nightmare of an epiphany, but for all intensive purposes, Marshall Lee was deathless and so it was the truth. Gumball was an earthly being, and Marshall’s reign dealt with matters of the metaphysical.  

Marshall sighed behind the curtain.

“Don’t think too much about it, Bubba,” Marshall said gently. “I try not to.”

Gumball nodded and excused himself from the room. He had some phone calls to make.

 

* * *

 

By the time Gumball returned to his bedroom, everyone who had been contacted about the crisis had been called and told that all of it had been a misunderstanding, and thanked for their timely response and eagerness to defend the kingdom. Most everyone was only relieved but Fionna had tried to get details on how exactly Prince Gumball had misunderstood a declaration of war, but Gumball wouldn’t divulge this information to her or anyone else. He knew that she had something of a budding friendship with the less-than-civilized Prince of the Fire Kingdom, and so she was mostly relieved to have her Friday night and not have to do battle against his family.

  The fates had been surprisingly merciful on Gumball for letting Marshall fix this for him: the clean-up and reassurance had gone smoothly and by the time the sun had fully set and Gumball found himself alone in a castle full of relieved citizens, it was almost like everything was back to normal.

Crisis avoided.

Two weeks ago, Gumball might have thrown a party, and maybe the people would expect him to throw a party, but the thought of entertaining in a loud and brightly-lit room full of his darling, rainbow-coloured candy mutants was almost more than he could handle.

Instead he simply told Peppermint Maid that everyone should retire early and that perhaps sometime early next week there would be a day-time holiday for the people’s pleasure…some sort of picnic or something similar.

And remarkably, it was just past eight o’clock and he was free of all responsibility.

Returning to his bedroom, Gumball heard the shower before he opened his door. The drapes to the bed had been neatly tied in their former drawn position, and the bed had been fixed. Even Gumball’s discarded robe from the evening before had been folded neatly over the arm of his wingback chair, and Marshall Lee’s shoes had been lined up neatly with the wall beside the door. There was no evidence that anything else had been touched, yet still—and not because he was truly distrustful but because he needed something to occupy himself—Gumball went about the room and inspected the contents of drawers, straightened knickknacks and put away a few of his books.  

The shower was turned off and Gumball felt a surge of nervousness. No matter how hard he tried to write dialogue in his head, nothing he could come up with sounded natural or sincere, and the fact was that what Marshall had done tonight had saved maybe hundreds of lives. Gumball wanted so badly to be angry still, to say his peace and maybe even yell at Marshall for the night before, but his thoughts had been quieted by the picture that had been painted of his place in this world, and Marshall’s.

He wanted to be angry about that, too, but that was equally as futile.

When Marshall emerged from the bathroom, he did so in a cloud of steam having bathed in water far hotter than Gumball could have ever withstood. He cringed to think of mildew and the health of his wall-paper, not to mention the state of the molding of the bathroom, which like in every room of this castle, was made of sugar—although chemically altered, of course.

Marshall wore his jeans, the black waistband of his underwear poking up just over the top and that was all. He stood there with bare feet and arms and chest, looking boyishly slim and hopelessly innocent as he ran his own fully healed hand over his chest and sighed.

Gumball looked at him from where he sat at the edge of the bed. He thought he was probably allowed to look at him, even if it did seem a little rude or piggish to do so—he didn’t care. Marshall saw this and said nothing, just stood there looking right back at him in a way that made Gumball blush more than to notice the hardness of the vampire’s stomach and chest and dark little nipples.

“I really have very little power over them,” Marshall said, voice cutting through the silence as smoothly as though it were butter to the weight of his deep voice. “I haven’t claimed any power over any of them in centuries…I’m surprised they didn’t call me out for having abandoned my title.”

“You ought to be destroying me,” Gumball said with no malice.

Marshall looked away, strands of wet hair falling. He stepped forward and half turned to close the bathroom door behind him and the shape of ribs was visible beneath his greyish skin.

“Mother will be upset with me, no doubt,” Marshall sighed, “for not letting them pick off that population at the edge of the border. The mountains would have been an asset to the Fire Kingdom, and she could have had those souls.”

Gumball nodded. He agreed with that.

“But,” Marshall said, looking at his hands, at his toes. Gumball noted the painted toenails and smiled tiredly. “She hasn’t been in my life for six hundred years, and I just couldn’t let them have it for nothing.”

Gumball nodded again and Marshall met his gaze.

“I’m sorry,” Marshall said softly. “For everything. For last morning, for how I spoke about you tonight...” he shook his head. “You don’t know how sorry I really am.”

Gumball nodded. “Thank you,” he said simply. He would take that apology.

“You’re smiling,” Marshall said gently.

“So are you,” Gumball remarked in the same tone.

Marshall shook his head. “Why?”

“I’m not going to war.”

“That’s not why you’re smiling, you’re smiling at _me_ ,” Marshall said, coming to sit on the bench at the foot of the bed where he had taken the liberty to leave Gumball’s folded clothes from the day before.

This felt too natural. Marshall had just emerged from a cloud of steam in his bedroom and now he sat comfortably naked to the waist at the foot of his bed. Marshall had been the unwilling and tortured, hungry vampire last night; he had pulled rank amongst foreign evil tribes as the timeless Demon Prince this evening; and now he was just a boy again and Gumball saw it all when he looked at his gentle smiling face now.

Gumball didn’t know what to say. If this had been scripted, he never would have allowed his next line to be written, but as it was, there was nothing else he could say.

He gave a little shrug. “I love you.”

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooh there it is! Don't you just want the best for them? Don't you just ache for it to be simple and sweet for them? 
> 
> This chapter was meant to have another scene, but the next bit would have made this one much longer than all the rest.


	13. Reconcile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fluff! So fluff, and not even rambling angsty musings from these freaks, but cuteness and cuddles and cupcakes!

* * *

 

The Fire Kingdom crisis had been successfully avoided. Marshall Lee was in the Candy Kingdom castle on good terms, and Prince Gumball felt an odd sort of elation in having the vampire as a guest, when not twenty-four hours ago Marshall had put him in an iron grip with every intention of sinking his teeth into him.

“Maybe no human blood tonight,” Marshall sighed, “not until I can wrap my head around the idea of it. I was a little lost last night, that wasn’t fair to you. I drank too much.”

When Marshall had suggested they unwind a little, do something together to take their minds off political agendas and demon appetites, Gumball did not expect to be led down into the castle’s bakery.

Marshall stood in the centre of the room with his arms spread wide, smiling.

“What shall we make?” He asked.

Gumball was touched, but he didn’t need this and he told Marshall as such. “Marshall, you don’t need to humor me.”

“Nonesense, it’ll be fun,” Marshall waved away Gumball’s further protests. “You came to my house and we laid on the floor like zombies and listened to music. Then you invited me to yours and I almost ate you, so I think it’s only fair we do something you enjoy this time.”

“I enjoyed the music,” Gumball said, moving further into the bakery to stand with his hip against a thick, butcher block table, and watched while Marshall looked around just as eagerly here as he had in the lab.

The wall behind him was lined with large, industrial ovens, and against the wall to his left were mixers large enough to prepare dough for the castle’s daily bread. Here there were also bins on wheels containing various flours, leavening agents, chemical stabilizers, mix-in fats, different granulations of white and brown sugar as well as isomalt, and blends of nutritious seeds and oats and grains.

On racks above this area, there were various sized strainers, copper-bottomed pots and sauce pans and maybe a hundred metal bowls in all sizes. There were round and square cake tins, cupcake and muffin pans, cookie sheets, loaf pans and cookie cutters for all seasons and occasions.

Cupboards and shelves on the opposite side were lined with canned fruits and other specialty ingredients, along with coloured fondant sealed in large plastic tubs. There was marzipan wrapped in plastic and foil, and tins of candied or dried fruits and other various nuts. There were different kinds of chocolate in various percentages of cocoa and fat, all in blocks and chips and shavings in labeled containers next to different types of powdered cocoa and cocoa-butter.

At the decoration table, there was a little rack with an impressive array of powdered, gel, and alcohol based tints and dyes with candy-flavours and concentrated extracts next to some smaller table mixers. Here, on display against the wall, were pretty glass jars full of little coloured Jimmies, nonpareils and chocolate vermicelli, dragees in various sizes shapes and metallic colour, pastilles, Jordan almonds with multi-coloured granulated and dusting sugars, as well as a rainbow of white-chocolate melting wafers.

Commonly used tools were sticking up out of tall tins that had been lined up against the wall on this stainless-steel work station: things such as French-style rolling pins, whisks in different sizes and shapes, brushes, thermometers, and flat and angled pallet knives. Oiled cloth piping bags hung to dry on pegs above the Royal Collection of Piping Tips.

 “Now this,” Marshall said as he looked around, “is your real _la-bor-a-tory_. _Look_ at all this stuff!”

Gumball smiled. He was proud of this workspace, and there had been times in his life when this room had brought him the most comfort and joy.

Against the back wall were a few fridges and one walk-in freezer. Marshall took the liberty to open the freezer door and from a shelf inside retrieved a tray of little vanilla cakes.

“Are these being saved for anything?” Marshall asked.

Gumball shrugged. He honestly didn’t know if the staff had set them aside for anything, and there were no clues from the whiteboards on the walls.

Marshall smiled and walked the tray over, unwrapping them from the cellophane wrap and setting a dozen onto the stainless steel table.

Gumball took an apron from a hook on the wall and tied it around his waist and rolled up his sleeves. Thankfully, he had changed into more casual clothes as the day’s stress ebbed, and was comfortable in a pink hooded sweatshirt and dark purple trousers.

He hauled up a large container of pre-mixed icing from the shelf below the table. It was the good fluffy kind that was part butter, part vegetable shortening with a colourless vanilla, and was always made in large quantities given it’s almost miraculous shelf-life.

Gumball realized that Marshall was watching him, and motioned to the overhead rack where most of the bowls were kept.

“Would you mind?” he asked pleasantly but without making eye contact. Marshall appeared to smile, and then levitated eagerly, digging through the noisy mess of metal.

“How many?”

“How many colours do you want?”

“I dunno…a few.”

“Six should be plenty.”

When Marshall returned with the bowls, he set them gently on the table beside where Gumball was prepared to doll out portions of undyed icing. Marshalls stood close, but not too close, and took the liberty to sort through the gel colours.

Lilac, wedgewood, buttercup, apricot and cerise, were the five colours he selected, and Gumball smiled to himself but wouldn’t give the vampire the satisfaction of praise for his chosen palette. Marshall saw the smile anyway, and Gumball’s attempt to hide it, and the air of the room remained playful and light.

“Do you want fondant?” Marshall asked.

“I don’t really care to bother,” Gumball said honestly, to which Marshall nodded approvingly. By the time the colours were mixed and the piping bags set up, the cupcakes had thawed enough to decorate without trouble, yet still firm which was best.

Gumball set a kettle on to boil on the bakery stovetop, and Marshall drew two stools to their workstation, organizing rags and silicon placemats and little dishes and bowls and pint-tubs of warm water to soak icing tips and together, the Vampire King and the Prince and Creator of Candy-Mutants set to work decorating cupcakes.

 

* * *

 

Gumball was exhausted by midnight. The cupcakes had been decorated with no attention paid to time, and often the two would get distracted by their conversations or laughing. Marshall had practised writing his name on the silicon in white icing, scraping it off and trying again and again until he could do it with a flourish that could rival even Gumball’s.

At first the conversation had been difficult: it was hard to talk about your life when the past was so muddied, and hard to talk about intentions when the future seemed both impossible and yet startlingly imminent. Gumball had to admit that while he trusted Marshall—lapse in judgement aside—his stomach flipped to hear the vampire speak of a future, especially when the concept of time for the both of them was so wildly skewed.

When Gumball thought of a future, it was ten years or fifty or a hundred or even two. When Marshall spoke of a future, what did he mean? Another thousand years? He had spoken of a life then: _in two thousand years or at the end of the next apocalypse_. It was terrifying.

So maintaining a light attitude had been difficult at first, until they’d warmed up to subjects of the present, or more specifically the people they mutually knew.

“Are you kidding?” Gumball laughed. He crunched an oblong silver dragee between his molars and laughed again. “ _Wildberry_ Prince?”

Marshall laughed and shook his head, breaking away from practising icing roses with a petal-tip and broad flower-nail. “Why is that so hard to believe?”

“ _You’re_ not the unbelievable one, _he’s_ the one I don’t believe,” Gumball said, shaking his head. “How did he ever…”

“Oh, I guess he and LSP had been reading some shitty teenage-vampire smut with Turtle Prince—or so I was told later—and WBP just came right up to me at one of LSP’s parties in the woods and…” the vampire shrugged, “I don’t know, I guess he got it in his head to know what it was like to be…” he groaned and Gumball laughed at him, loving to see Marshall in this loosened up state. “Ah, no! _How did he say it_?” Gumball laughed again and Marshall shook his head, taking up the flower nail again as he bit his lip and then rolled his eyes as he remembered, “Ah, Glob he said he wanted to be _slowly devoured_ —”

“No!”

“—Yeah—By the most dangerous boy in all of Ooo.”

“Ohmyglob, he _didn’t_.”

“He did. It was humiliating.”

“What did LSP say? LSP had to be like _right_ there.”

“Of course he was.”

“What did he say?”

Marshall laughed and widened his eyes, laid another petal on his droopy rose, shooting Gumball a glance while grinning. “You don’t _want_ to know what LSP said.” 

“Fucking LSP,” Gumball shook his head, laughing still. He watched Marshall with the icing, thinking to himself that it was actually an asset to have cold-as-death hands to do this sort of work: it wouldn’t melt in the bag as he continued. His mind wandered. “But wait…no! You didn’t…?”

Marshall shrugged, bit his lip, and concentrated very hard on his rose.

“Marshall!”

Marshall shook his head. “What?” He glanced again to Gumball and laughed, relieved, when he saw that Gumball still smiled. “Just a little nip,” he said, and winked.

“You’re horrible.”

“I know,” Marshall sighed. “He wasn’t even very good.” He hummed, scraped the rose on the side of the bowl and set down the icing bag. “How about you? Any royal trysts?”

“Royal?” Gumball asked, taking another dragee. Marshall allowed him to stall. “No, not in a long time. A while ago—I mean _ages_ ago—there was a thing with a Jungle Princess but…” he shook his head, refusing to remember. Marshall nodded and seemed to understand: _mortal_.

“So just commoners then?” Marshall asked quietly, wiping at his hands with a damp cloth.

“I guess so,” Gumball replied simply, making his voice as even as possible while Marshall kept not looking at him. “But it’s not like there are very many people who would even…” he hesitated and Marshall glanced his way, nodding again.

“The Jungle People,” he said, “the Hyoomans, who else?”

“Not much,” Gumball very nearly grumbled. He thought he saw the vampire smirk. “What’s that look for?”

Marshall dared to laugh quietly. “It’s just that you and I are both so very different, and from different times and with such different needs, but we’re also the same in a lot of ways. We both need to be close to people that we can identify with.” He looked Gumball over. “Sometimes I can’t help but feel alien, no matter how diverse this world is. There’s nobody out there quiet like me.”

“There are other vampires,” Gumball said lightly, but Marshall simply shook his head and Gumball let it drop.

“I guess you are pretty unique, Bubba,” Marshall said, tone picking up as he really looked at Gumball and smiled. “You are.”

Gumball smiled because it was required and then looked away. He took up the container of hard and flavourless silver candies and shook it, watching the polished sugar shine.

“Sometimes I can’t help but feel lonely,” Gumball said softly, leaning with his elbows on the table as he picked through the container. He plucked a little candy, then dropped it back with the others. “I have this life built up and all these people constantly around me, but I never feel as alone as when I’m standing in a room of them.”

Marshall hummed low. “Have you ever thought to…to make someone who is more…like yourself?” He chose his words delicately and for that, Gumball was grateful. “Is it possible?”

“It’s possible,” Gumball admitted, “but how could I? Manufacture someone to love me…how could I ever truly love someone who was created for that purpose?”

“Maybe someone to keep you company,” Marshall offered. “Someone to spend the night with.”

“I have you for that,” Gumball said, forcing that smile again and glancing to his friend who softened, eyes so full of pity that Gumball nearly groaned aloud. “Don’t feel sorry for me, Marshall,” he sighed, “I am loved.”

“You _are_ loved,” Marshall agreed, smiling still and letting Gumball look at him. “And you’re exhausted, come on.”

Gumball sat up turned, unsure what to do when Marshall stood and extended his hand. Gumball stared, not knowing if he should take it, but knowing that he wasn’t intended to just look at it either. He hesitated then finally slipped his hand into that cool vampire palm, standing with the gesture and something in him melted. This was a hand just like his hand: those four fingers and thumb with two joints in each, knuckles, fingernails and wrist all like his. Nothing squishy or slimy or malformed or brightly coloured, just cool and smooth and lightly greyed.

It was nearly painful, the rush of emotion Gumball felt, the sudden and almost undeniable need to be closer to this one who was built so very similarly to himself that it seemed impossible that they came from such different worlds.

Marshall lifted his hand with Gumball’s still in it and let the fingers entwine. Marshall let go only to reach to lightly touch the boy’s cheek and a flash of something like pain in his own eyes became clear but then disappeared as quickly as it had come. Even through the mutual desire for it, there was no kiss, and Marshall led Gumball quietly from the bakery and back to his quarters. 

 

* * *

 

Gumball dressed unceremoniously, tossing his clothes on the floor, pulling off his boots one at a time with a grunt as he leaned against the wall for support. Marshall watched, but not intensely, and Gumball allowed it figuring there would be nothing he could expose that Marshall would care to see anyway. He stood in underpants and a t-shirt and went to sit on the edge of the bed beside his friend.

“You’re not staying?” Gumball asked in the soft orange light of his little bedside lamp. Marshall had only been awake for a few hours, so this was no time for him to be bedding down.  

Marshall shook his head. “I should sleep at my own place today,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow I’ll come back and we can watch a movie or something before you go to sleep.”

Gumball didn’t want him to go. He would have sat there for hours longer just talking like they had been if he could have stayed attentive. He nodded, feeling a little heavy from sleepiness. A movie would be nice.

“I’m so sorry about everything,” Marshall whispered. He turned and sighed and Gumball closed his eyes to feel an affectionate kiss at his temple. “I’m a monster.”

Gumball hummed. “Sometimes.”

Marshall said nothing, but held his hand out on his own leg, palm up and Gumball traced the hand with his fingers, from their tips to the heel of his exposed palm. Marshall made a fist, enclosing Gumball’s fingertips and Gumball let his head fall to Marshall’s shoulder and they were again in the position they had been just twenty-four hours prior.

“Don’t go,” Gumball said. “Not yet. Stay with me, for a little bit.”

Marshall stood and pulled back the covers of the bed, motioning for Gumball to get in, which he did. Being horizontal and feeling the weight of the blankets over him was absolute bliss, and Gumball hummed in his pleasure of it, sighing happiness as Marshall let his weight slowly sink into the plush mattress beside him.

This wasn’t the first time Gumball had rested his head on Marshall Lee’s chest like this, but it was the first time in lifetimes of loneliness; and more than any yearning for that body, it was the familiarity of being next to him again that made him sigh. He had vague recollections of a beginning with Marshall, and of finding it somewhat off-putting to lay next to one with a body _so much_ like his own—but that had been a very long time ago, before he had discovered how just comfortable that boyish chest could really be.  

He lifted his hand as he lay on his side and let it rest just under Marshall’s collarbone, and remarked with something of a jolting reminder that Marshall was dead, that the boy had no heartbeat.

Gumball gasped and propped himself on an elbow, clearly startling Marshall who had just reached to turn off the bedside lamp.

“What?” Marshall asked, dark eyes wide.

“Your heart!” Gumball gasped, feeling sorry to even mention it, but needing Marshall to know that he had finally understood.

Marshall lifted his own hand to his chest and frowned. “What about it?”

“Last night, with the blood…it started your heart again, didn’t it?”

Marshall sighed and laid back down, staring at the canopy above them.

“It did,” Gumball whispered. “I’m so stupid, _of course_ it did. Marshall…do you want more? I can give you more, you can have as much as it takes to—”

Marshall was shaking his head. “No,” he said gently. “No, Bubba please, just lay with me for a while, be calm.”

“But…”

“ _Please_. I’m fine.”

Gumball did as he was told, feeling that same little rush of pleasure to lay back down next to him in his very own bed, even if he was a little confused and still sorry to have brought this up.

“It’s much easier to control myself if my heart is still,” Marshall said softly, letting Gumball lay his hand there again. Gumball felt absent fingers toy with the ends of his hair. “I have nothing to lose, right? But Marshall-With-A-Heartbeat is a blood-thirsty sonofabitch, Bubba. The instinct to tuck into anything with a pulse is so much harder to ignore when I feel like my own is in jeopardy. I’m sorry that you know just how intense that instinct is first hand. I can’t even drink your blood…you never should have been exposed to that.”

“It’s just _human_ blood that does this,” Gumball stated, closing his eyes only after Marshall turned off the light. He ran his fingers over Marshall’s sternum, wondering in an absent sort of why what he truly found attractive about him: cold, bony, cryptic, mostly evil…

“Yes,” Marshall said softly. “Don’t think on it too much. I was greedy last night, it won’t happen again.”

“So you haven’t had a heartbeat since—”

“ _For a while_. Bubba, please, I don’t want to talk about it,” he sighed.

“What about the other vampires?”

“Look—Bubba, we can talk about anything else. _Do_ anything else, but _please_ just let this go.” Those cool fingers found Gumball’s scalp and the prince sighed, accepting Marshall’s plea.

   He just couldn’t stop thinking about it though. He couldn’t stop feeling his own heart beating in his chest and feeling the rhythm in his temples and in his stomach and in his throat. He lay stiffly beside Marshall, not thinking about the boy he had longed to sleep next to, but about his own racing heart until Marshall sighed and turned and wiggled under the blankets and held him tight.

Gumball was surprised, but not scared. This time it was clear that Marshall was present, and when Gumball was again pushed onto his back, Marshall ran his fingers gently over his hair, over his cheeks and collarbone and chest in a slow and loving manner. Cool fingers lighted on Gumball’s lips and Gumball kissed them, looking up in the murky grey to see those dark eyes looking down at him with glittering intent, not fear or even that sort of cautious hopefulness that always broke Gumball’s heart.

He lifted his chin and angled into Marshall’s kiss, belated from that final moment in the bakery and just that much sweeter for their patience. Gumball didn’t ask questions, not to himself or to Marshall, and barring meditations of the future or the past, he freed himself of all thought and expectation and fear, and simply let this moment be good.

 

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are so many fics in which Gumball loves to bake. I like the idea, but I don't imagine him having so much time for those kinds of hobbies. I feel like MY Bubba wouldn't be too concerned about baking "thank you" creampuffs either...let his staff take care of that. 
> 
> Also, can you tell I'm a baker? ;)


End file.
